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

Just thought I'd add a simple alternative to Kaleb's and others' posts (which detailed the use of the find -prune option, ack, repofind commands etc.) which is particularly applicable to the usage you have described in the question (and any other similar usages):

1. For performance, you should always try to use find ... -exec grep ... + (thanks Kenji for pointing this out) or find ... | xargs egrep ... (portable) or find ... -print0 | xargs -0 egrep ... (GNU; works on filenames containing spaces) instead of find ... -exec grep ... \;.

   The find ... -exec ... + and find | xargs form does not fork egrep for each file, but rather for a bunch of files at a time, resulting in much faster execution.

2. When using the find | xargs form you can also use grep to easily and quickly prune .svn (or any directories or regular expression), i.e. find ... -print0 | grep -v '/\.svn' | xargs -0 egrep ... (useful when you need something quick and can't be bothered to remember how to set up find's -prune logic.)

   The find | grep | xargs approach is similar to GNU find's -regex option (see ghostdog74's post), but is more portable (will also work on platforms where GNU find is not available.)