I'm working with a very large code base and I find it useful to be selective about which directories are included for use with Exuberant Ctags. The --exclude option works well to eliminate individual file and directory names (with globing wildcards), but I can't figure out how to get it to exclude path patterns containing more than one directory. For example, I may want to exclude a directory tests, but only when processing thirdparty\tests (under Windows). The problem is if I just use --exclude=tests I exclude too many directories, including a test directory in the code I'm actively working on. Here are some things I've tried: --exclude=thirdparty\tests --exclude=thirdparty\\tests --exclude=*\thirdparty\tests --exclude=*\\thirdparty\\tests --exclude=thirdparty/tests Ctags silently ignores all these as evidenced by an examination of the tags file. How can I exclude a directory only when it is preceded by a given parent directory?