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

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

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.

GNU find

find .  ! -regex ".*[/]\.svn[/]?.*"

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

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 "Discarding out of date message: id " 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;

find . | grep -v \.svn

Why dont you pipe your command with grep which is easily understandable:

your find command| grep -v '\.svn'

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.)

Try findrepo which is a simple wrapper around find/grep and much faster than ack You would use it in this case like:

findrepo uint 'messages.*'

wcfind is a find wrapper script that I use to automagically remove .svn directories.