How can I exclude directories from grep -R?

Question

I want to traverse all subdirectories, except the "node_modules" directory.

Answer 1

As per the grep manual page, it's possible to specify an exclusion list of both files and directories.

See below:

--exclude-dir=DIR

Exclude directories matching the pattern DIR from recursive

searches.

--exclude-from=FILE

Skip files whose base name matches any of the file-name globs

read from FILE (using wildcard matching as described under

--exclude).

Answer 2

Here's one way that might work for you ...

grep -R "...pattern..." $(find . -type f )

or

grep -R "...pattern..." $(find /some/dir/path -type f )