How do you exclude symlinks in a grep?

Question

I want to grep -R a directory but exclude symlinks how dow I do it?

Maybe something like grep -R --no-symlinks or something?

Thank

Answer 1

For now.. here is how I would exclude symbolic links when using grep

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If you want just file names matching your search:

for f in $(grep -Rl 'search' *); do if [ ! -h "$f" ]; then echo "$f"; fi; done;

Explaination:

• grep -R # recursive
• grep -l # file names only
• if [ ! -h "file" ] # bash if not a symbolic link

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If you want the matched content output, how about a double grep:

srch="whatever"; for f in $(grep -Rl "$srch" *); do if [ ! -h "$f" ]; then
  echo -e "\n## $f";
  grep -n "$srch" "$f";
fi; done;

Explaination:

• echo -e # enable interpretation of backslash escapes
• grep -n # adds line numbers to output

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.. It's not perfect of course. But it could get the job done!