ACK: exclude certain paths (directory and its subdirectories) from search

With ACK 2.x , I can specify command line options to exclude specific drives from being displayed in the results. For example, to exclude the 'test' directory I can use :

ack -v -g 'test' | ack -x pattern

('test' can be a regex for exceptions for dirs)

I can also ignore the directory using .ackrc by adding --ignore-dir=save.d

to .ackrc or using it as a command line parameter. But it seems that I cannot exclude the paths (registry and its subdivisions) using RegEx. I tried to add the following:

--ignore-dir=match:^\/specific\/path\/to\/test\/.*$

as well as the following options

--ignore-dir=match:/^\/specific\/path\/to\/test\/.*$/

--ignore-dir=match:\/specific\/path\/to\/test\/.*

--ignore-dir=match:/specific/path/to/test/.*

--ignore-dir=match:/specific/path/to/test/

(as per this user - ignore-dir and -ignore-file, and indeed, all file matching in ack is done with regex, not with shell shell patterns , but I've also tried using shell shell patterns.)

but this gives me:

Non-is filters are not yet supported for --ignore-dir at /usr/bin/ack line 157

Outputting the "match:" part of the alternatives above does not result in an error, but neither does dirs.

The manual states that "subdirectories like foo / bar are not supported." To solve this problem, in ACK, at least prior to ACK 2.12, it is not possible to exclude certain directories and subdirectories. You can only exclude all paths from which a directory matches a simple string or regular expression. Or is there an undocumented clever way to get around this limitation?