On Wednesday, May 03, 2017 10:57:09 AM Richard Owlett wrote: > The man page for find confuses me. > Looking for explanatory material I found and tried to follow examples in > http://mywiki.wooledge.org/UsingFind#A-prune . > > I tried > find /home/richard \( -type d -name .* -prune \) -o -atime -42 -print > and > find /home/richard \( -type d -name .* -prune \) -atime -42 -print > unsuccessfully. > > Each got an "find: paths must precede expression: .." error > > HOW?
Can't answer your question off the top of my head, but, when I run into problems like this, I try to run subsets of the command to try to narrow down the problem. For example, I might first try find /home/richard--see if it works (provides any output) and what that output looks like, then try adding switches or other parts of the command one at a time. Maybe next I'd try: find /home/richard -type d -name .* (without the escaped parens), then maybe add the parens (I've never tried parens in a command like that, so am not sure they work, and then continue adding switches (or whatever) pretty much one at a time. If I have to ask for help on the mailing list, I'd try to provide the command that I think I want to run (but didn't) (as you did), but also one or more of the commands I tried and did work.
