I am trying to get a list of top level directories below the search path but I don't want to descend subdirectories. The find command listed below returns me the list I want but it also returns subdirectories. I can't seem to get the -prune option to work the way I want. How would I modify the following find command?

find ../users -type d \( -name "e[0-9]*" -o -name "users/cnt[0-9]*" \)
../users/cnt4071
../users/e5034071
../users/e0905759
../users/home.archive/e0279813 <-- I don't want to see this one

Try this:
find ../users \( ! -name users -prune \) -name 'e[0-9]*' -o -name 'cnt[0-9]*'

That worked. Thanks.

As always Perderabo's answers are a real treat!!

BTW I found this site which contains info related to the trick Perderabo had just done...

http://www.uni-ulm.de/~s_smasch/various/find/

great explanation...

Cheers!
Vishnu.

find ../users \( ! -name users -prune \) -name 'e[0-9]*' -o -name 'cnt[0-9]*'


../users -> search in /users.

\( ! -name users -prune \) -> list directories in the level of /users/thislevel.

-name 'e[0-9]*' -> list the single directory level which matches the search criteria

-0 -> the or syntax...

-name 'cnt[0-90*' -> also if matches this.....


is the above understanding correct?

Yes, but I would phrase it:
\( ! -name users -prune \) -> unless a directory is named "users" do not show its contents.

This reveals the weakness of this approach: it won't work well if we have a:
/users/users/files