search for: filetobecopi

I need to get around the requirement of --exclude=* to have all the parent directories of the files and directories that are to be included. So given the file.. /startdirectory/subdirectory1/subdirectory2/filetobecopied I need to include / /subdirectory1 /subdirectory1/subdirectory2 I could just include the entire directory structure , but alternatively just include the needed paths. So the question is how can I extract every parent directory of this path? I tried writing a recursive routine that accepts /s...