[OT] shell quoting

[Alexander Kirillov]

Hi all!

I need to compare two different versions of a source tree
excluding certain directories and print out some statistics
on the files which have been changed, removed or added.

Here comes a boiled down example of the problem I'm having.
Let's say there are 4 files in the current directory:

./aa
./aaa
./bb
./bbb

and I want to exclude all paths starting with ./bb
This one is easy:

find . ! -path './bb*'

Now I want to make it into a generic script:

DIR=.
OPT='! -path $DIR/bb*'
find $DIR $OPT

$DIR and * within OPT are essential
and no matter what I've tried I can't get the parameter expansion right.

Any suggestions will be appreciated,
Sasha