Comments on: Skip .svn directories when using grep

By: Tim White

Tim White — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:00:11 +0000

@Thomas - exclude-dir is available with grep 2.5.3+. You can check your grep version with grep -V

By: Thomas Hunter

Thomas Hunter — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:54:43 +0000

$ grep --exclude-dir='.git'
grep: unrecognized option `--exclude-dir=.git'

By: Kevin Brubeck Unhammer

Kevin Brubeck Unhammer — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 09:25:02 +0000

I have this in my ~/.bashrc:

export GREP_OPTIONS="--exclude-dir=.svn --exclude-dir=.git"

By: Tim White

Tim White — Thu, 06 May 2010 17:11:33 +0000

@Chris AFAIK, yes, your example is the easiest way to do that.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:32:29 +0000

Great tip thanks! What about when you want to exclude multiple directories? Do you have to type --exclude-dir multiple times or is there another way? Example: $ grep -r --exclude-dir='.svn' --exclude-dir='debug' --exclude-dir='templates' 'my search string' /some/directory