grep without exclude-dir

How to use grep to search for a word in a file while excluding certain directories is easy with the “–exclude-directory” option, but even when this option is not available we can still get the same results with some command line magic.

grep

Grep allows us to search a file (or files) for a string in that file.

Search for the word ‘needle’ from the current directory recursively (-r) through any sub-directories.

grep -i -r 'needle' .

Note: This search is not case-sensitive (i.e. case-insensitive) because we are using -i). In other words this search will match ‘needle’, ‘NEEDLE’, ‘nEeDLe’, etc.

Exclude a Directory

We can exclude a directory using the --exclude-dir option.

Search for the word ‘needle’ from the current directory recursively through any sub-directories, while excluding the .git directory.

grep -i -r --exclude-dir=".git" 'needle' .

Exclude Multiple Directories

Search for the word ‘needle’ from the current directory recursively through any sub-directories, while excluding the .git, vendor, and tests directories.

grep -i -r --exclude-dir="vendor" --exclude-dir=".git" --exclude-dir="tests" 'needle' .

Exclude a Directory without “exclude-dir” option

Unfortunately, you may find older versions of grep that do not support the --exclude-dir option (and if you’re working on someone else’s server you may not be able to update grep).

In this case, we can exclude a directory by first using find to list the files and then (with the help of xargs) running the results of find through grep.

Search for the word ‘needle’ from the current directory recursively through any sub-directories, while excluding the .git directory.

Get a list of the files from the current directory recursively through any sub-directories, while excluding the .git directory. Then use grep on the files returned by find to look for ‘needle’.

find . -type f ! -path "./.git/*" | xargs grep 'needle' -H

Get a list of the files from the current directory recursively through any sub-directories, while excluding the .git, vendor, and tests directories. Then use grep on the files returned by find to look for ‘needle’.

find . -type f ! -path "*/.git/*" ! -path "*/vendor/*" ! -path "*/tests/*" | xargs grep 'needle' -H

Note It is important to include the -H parameter for grep so even if our find commands return only one file, we still display the filename in the results.

Sal Ferrarello (@salcode)

Sal is a PHP developer with a focus on the WordPress platform. He is a conference speaker with a background including Piano Player, Radio DJ, Magician/Juggler, Beach Photographer, and High School Math Teacher. Sal can be found professionally at WebDevStudios, where he works as a senior backend engineer.