Excluding a single pattern
When using the grep command, to invert the search and return lines that do not include a specific pattern or exclude a specific string, you can use the -v flag.
$ grep -v "pattern" file
For example, to search for all lines in a file that do not contain the word "apple", you can use the following command:
Alternatively, if you want to return lines that do not include a specific pattern as a whole, which means a pattern surrounded by non-word characters, such as spaces, punctuation, or the start/end of a line, you can use the -w flag.
$ grep -v -w "pattern" file
For example:
Excluding multiple patterns
To return lines that specifically do not include multiple patterns (see grep multiple strings for the opposite), you can use the -e flag combined with the -v flag.
$ grep -v -e "fist_pattern" -e "second_pattern" file
For example:
Alternatively, you can use the -E flag combined with the | symbol:
$ grep -v -E "fist_pattern|second_pattern" file
For example:
Excluding Files and Directories From a Search
As the opposite of including specific directories in a grep, It is sometimes necessary to exclude certain files and directories from a search when using the recursive flag -r flag.
Excluding files
To exclude one or more files that match a glob pattern, you can use the --exclude flag.
$ grep -r --exclude="expression" "pattern" directory
For example:
Excluding directories
To exclude one or more directories that match a glob pattern, you can use the --exclude-dir flag.
$ grep -r --exclude-dir="expression" "pattern" directory
For example:
Written by
Razvan Ludosanu
Founder, learnbackend.dev
Filed Under
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