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?