[Tutor] Excluding branches while walking directory tree

[William O'Higgins Witteman]

Hello all,

I am looking for an approach for the following problem:

I have to walk a directory tree and examine files within it.  I have a
set of directory names and filename patterns that I must skip while
doing this walk.  How do I create a set of rules to skip files or
directory branches?  I'm looking for something reasonably scalable, 
'cause I'm sure to need to update these rules in the future.

Thanks.
-- 

yours,

William