Exclude hidden subdirectories from grep -r

Question

I have a svn local copy, i want to make a search on the string some_string.

$ grep some_string * -r
lang/en:some_string=Some string
lang/.svn/en:some_string=Some string

But if a go little further, it seems that first level hidden directories are excluded :

$ cd lang && grep some_string * -r
en:some_string=Some string

How can I remove the hidden svn diretories from my output, and not only from the first depth level?

$ grep some_string * -r --which_option_here?
lang/en:some_string=Some string

Not a direct answer, but you may want to try [ack](http://beyondgrep.com/). — depquid, Oct 01 '14 at 14:13

score 37 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:40

37

Use --exclude-dir option, e.g.:

grep -r --exclude-dir='.*' some_string

From man grep:

--exclude-dir=DIR
              Exclude directories matching the pattern DIR from recursive searches.

Note however, that --exclude-dir option is available only in GNU grep. If your grep doesn't support it, you may need to use other tool as find for example:

find . \( -name .svn -prune \) -o -name "*" -exec grep -H "some_string" {} 2>/dev/null \;

edited May 23 '17 at 12:40

Community

1

answered Oct 01 '14 at 14:13

jimmij

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I must have a too old Linux... – MUY Belgium Oct 02 '14 at 14:41
I have edited the answer, try the `find` version if your grep doesn't support `--exclude-dir`. – jimmij Oct 02 '14 at 15:04
I have version grep version 2.5.1, and there is no --exclude-dir argument, and I have tried everything I thought of... – MUY Belgium Oct 06 '14 at 09:21
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Second solution doesn't use `--exclude-dir`, have you tried it? – jimmij Oct 06 '14 at 10:02
I have "unreconized option" – MUY Belgium Oct 06 '14 at 13:12
That's because the `-H` option is also available only with `gnu grep`. Try it with `grep "pattern" /dev/null {}...` instead of `grep -H "pattern" {}...` – don_crissti Aug 23 '15 at 01:14
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side note: `grep -r --exclude-dir='.*' .` will exclude everything, because everything starts with `./` when you specify `.` as an explicit path argument. So be careful not to specify the current directory explicitly, or use an exclusion pattern like `--eclude-dir='.?*'`, which matches and excludes only dirs with at least one character after the dot. – Robin479 Nov 23 '18 at 10:11
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This did not work for me on a Fedora. I used `--exclude-dir='.[^.]*'` instead. – russoue Nov 21 '19 at 23:26
This absolutely fails when using on the current directory `.` (big use case). It will ALWAYS return NOTHING. – WalksB Jul 08 '22 at 23:46
I just learned that if you don't pass any argument for the directory, grep still works on the current directory (but doesn't face the exclude current directory problem). So I guess with this workaround it's not a big use case. – WalksB Jul 09 '22 at 00:19

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 23 '17 at 14:33

1

I normally use this:

for e in $(find . -maxdepth 1 -type d); do echo ${e#\./}; done | grep -v '^\.'

${e%\./} will remove the first ./ and then grep removes everything that begins with a dot.

edited Feb 23 '17 at 14:33

Stephen Rauch

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answered Feb 23 '17 at 14:04

Manuel

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Code says `e#`, text says `e%` – Stephen Rauch Feb 23 '17 at 14:12

Cody Moniz · Answer 3 · 2023-05-05T01:10:05.330

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On OSX, I'm using:

grep -lR --exclude-dir={'*node_modules*',build,'./.*'} 'SearchTerm'

edited May 05 '23 at 01:10

answered May 04 '23 at 21:44

Cody Moniz

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Exclude hidden subdirectories from grep -r

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