grep --exclude/--include syntax (do not grep through certain files)
- by Piskvor
I'm looking for the string "foo=" (without quotes) in text files in a directory tree. It's on a common Linux machine, I have bash shell:
grep -ircl "foo=" *
In the directories are also many binary files which match "foo=". As these results are not relevant and slow down the search, I want grep to skip searching these files (mostly JPEG and PNG images): how would I do that?
I know there are the --exclude=PATTERN and --include=PATTERN options, but what is the pattern format?
manpage of grep says:
--include=PATTERN Recurse in directories only searching file matching PATTERN.
--exclude=PATTERN Recurse in directories skip file matching PATTERN.
Searching on grep include, grep include exclude, grep exclude and variants did not find anything relevant
If there's a better way of grepping only in certain files, I'm all for it; moving the offending files is not an option, I can't search only certain directories (the directory structure is a big mess, with everything everywhere). Also, I can't install anything, so I have to do with common tools (like grep or the suggested find).
UPDATES: @Adam Rosenfield's answer is just what I was looking for:
grep -ircl --exclude=*.{png,jpg} "foo=" *
@rmeador's answer is also a good solution:
grep -Ir --exclude="*\.svn*" "pattern" *
It searches recursively, ignores binary files, and doesn't look inside Subversion hidden folders.(...)
