Passing multiple directories to the -prune option in find

With GNU find (i.e. under non-embedded Linux or Cygwin), you can use -regex to combine all these -path wildcards into a single regex.

find . -regextype posix-extended \
     -type d -regex '\./(\..*|Music|Documents)' -prune -o \
     -type f -regex '.*(\.(bck|bak|backup)|~)' -print0 |
xargs -0 --no-run-if-empty trash-put

With FreeBSD or OSX, use -E instead of -regextype posix-extended.

As far as I know, there is no option to tell find to read patterns from a file. An easy workaround is to save the patterns I want to exclude in a file and pass that file as input for a reverse grep. As an example, I have created the following files and directories:

$ tree -a
.
├── a
├── .aa
├── .aa.bak
├── a.bck
├── b
├── .dir1
│   └── bb1.bak
├── dir2
│   └── bb2.bak
├── b.bak
├── c
├── c~
├── Documents
│   └── Documents.bak
├── exclude.txt
├── foo.backup
└── Music
    └── Music.bak

If I understood the example you posted correctly, you want to move a.bck, .aa.bak, b.bak, c~, foo.backup and dir2/bb2.bak to the trash and leave .aa.bak, .dir1/bb1.bak, Documents/Documents.bak and Music/Music.bak where they are. I have, therefore, created the file exclude.txt with the following contents (you can add as many as you want):

$ cat exclude.txt 
./.*/
./Music
./Documents

I use ./.*/ because I understood your original find to mean that you want to move hidden backup files (.foo) that are in the current directory but exclude any backup files that are in hidden directories (.foo/bar). So, I can now run the find command and use grep to exclude unwanted files:

$ find . -type f | grep -vZf exclude.txt | xargs -0 --no-run-if-empty trash-put

---

Grep options:

   -v, --invert-match
          Invert  the  sense  of matching, to select non-matching
          lines.  (-v is specified by POSIX.)
   -f FILE, --file=FILE
          Obtain patterns from FILE, one  per  line.   The  empty
          file  contains  zero  patterns,  and  therefore matches
          nothing.  (-f is specified by POSIX.)
   -Z, --null
          Output a zero byte (the ASCII NUL character) instead of
          the  character  that normally follows a file name.  For
          example, grep -lZ outputs a zero byte after  each  file
          name  instead  of the usual newline.  This option makes
          the output unambiguous, even in the  presence  of  file
          names  containing  unusual  characters  like  newlines.
          This  option  can  be  used  with  commands  like  find
          -print0,  perl  -0,  sort  -z,  and xargs -0 to process
          arbitrary file names, even those that  contain  newline
          characters.

Group -path ... -prune into one expression enclosed by \( ... \) using -o (or) logic.

find /somepath \( -path /a -prune -o \
                  -path /b -prune -o \
                  -path /c -prune \
               \) \
               -o -print

The example will not iterate directories or files at or under /somepath/a, /somepath/b, and /somepath/c.

Here is a more specific example using multiple actions.

find / \( -path /dev -prune -o \
          -path /proc -prune -o \
          -path /sys -prune \
       \) \
       -o -printf '%p ' -exec cksum {} \;