How can I get `find` to ignore .svn directories?

Question

I often use the find command to search through source code, delete files, whatever. Annoyingly, because Subversion stores duplicates of each file in its .

Answer 1

If you tell find to search through '*', then it will skip all "dot files" in the root:

find *

or with path

find /path/*

This is not an exact / perfect solution to the question. However, few solutions are simpler than this one. Performance is great too, since it doesn't even enter the hidden directories.

shortcomings:

• it doesn't handle nested "dot files".
• all "dot files" are ignored, not just ".git" and ".svn".

So in your example adding a star is the only modification you would need:

find * -name 'messages.*' -exec grep -Iw uint {} +

Answer 2

As follows:

find . -path '*/.svn*' -prune -o -print

Or, alternatively based on a directory and not a path prefix:

find . -name .svn -a -type d -prune -o -print

Answer 3

For searching, can I suggest you look at ack ? It's a source-code aware find, and as such will automatically ignore many file types, including source code repository info such as the above.

Answer 4

I use grep for this purpose. Put this in your ~/.bashrc

export GREP_OPTIONS="--binary-files=without-match --color=auto --devices=skip --exclude-dir=CVS --exclude-dir=.libs --exclude-dir=.deps --exclude-dir=.svn"

grep automatically uses these options on invocation

Answer 5

Create a script called ~/bin/svnfind:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Attempts to behave identically to a plain `find' command while ignoring .svn/
# directories.

OPTIONS=()
PATHS=()
EXPR=()

while [[ $1 =~ ^-[HLP]+ ]]; do
    OPTIONS+=("$1")
    shift
done

while [[ $# -gt 0 ]] && ! [[ $1 =~ '^[-(),!]' ]]; do
    PATHS+=("$1")
    shift
done

# If user's expression contains no action then we'll add the normally-implied
# `-print'.
ACTION=-print

while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
    case "$1" in
       -delete|-exec|-execdir|-fls|-fprint|-fprint0|-fprintf|-ok|-print|-okdir|-print0|-printf|-prune|-quit|-ls)
            ACTION=;;
    esac

    EXPR+=("$1")
    shift
done

if [[ ${#EXPR} -eq 0 ]]; then
    EXPR=(-true)
fi

exec -a "$(basename "$0")" find "${OPTIONS[@]}" "${PATHS[@]}" -name .svn -type d -prune -o '(' "${EXPR[@]}" ')' $ACTION

This script behaves identically to a plain find command but it prunes out .svn directories. Otherwise the behavior is identical.

Example:

# svnfind -name 'messages.*' -exec grep -Iw uint {} +
./messages.cpp:            Log::verbose << "Discarding out of date message: id " << uint(olderMessage.id)
./messages.cpp:    Log::verbose << "Added to send queue: " << *message << ": id " << uint(preparedMessage->id)
./messages.cpp:                Log::error << "Received message with invalid SHA-1 hash: id " << uint(incomingMessage.id)
./messages.cpp:            Log::verbose << "Received " << *message << ": id " << uint(incomingMessage.id)
./messages.cpp:            Log::verbose << "Sent message: id " << uint(preparedMessage->id)
./messages.cpp:        Log::verbose << "Discarding unsent message: id " << uint(preparedMessage->id)
./messages.cpp:        for (uint i = 0; i < 10 && !_stopThreads; ++i) {
./virus/messages.cpp:void VsMessageProcessor::_progress(const string &fileName, uint scanCount)
./virus/messages.cpp:ProgressMessage::ProgressMessage(const string &fileName, uint scanCount)
./virus/messages.h:    void _progress(const std::string &fileName, uint scanCount);
./virus/messages.h:    ProgressMessage(const std::string &fileName, uint scanCount);
./virus/messages.h:    uint        _scanCount;

Answer 6

I use find with the -not -path options. I have not had good luck with prune.

find .  -name "*.groovy" -not -path "./target/*" -print

will find the groovy files not in the target directory path.