Ack — Ignoring multiple directories without repeating the flag

ack
SparrwHawk picture SparrwHawk · Dec 16, 2013 · Viewed 11.8k times · Source

Is it possible to ignore multiple directories in Ack, without repeating the flag?

e.g. I know the following works (i.e. setting multiple flags):

ack --ignore-dir=install --ignore-dir=php 'teststring'

I was hoping that I could separate directories with commas, like I can do with the extensions as follows:

ack --ignore-file=ext:css,scss,orig 'teststring'

However, the following comma separated ignore flag doesn't work:

ack --ignore-dir=install,php 'textstring'

Is it possible to use some short-hand equivalent, so I don't have to repeatedly type out the --ignore-dir flag?

Answer

Mandar Pathak picture Mandar Pathak · Feb 13, 2014

It's actually similar to how you would specify the include patterns for grep:

ack <term> --ignore-dir={dir_a,dir_b}

However, This format does not work with a single directory. So

ack <term> --ignore-dir={log}

will not work.

Related questions

How do I run programs with Strawberry Perl?

A coworker is trying to use ack (a Perl program) on his Windows machine, having tried it under Linux and decided he definitely wants to use it. He managed to get Strawberry Perl installed on his machine, but can't seem …

Read More
ack regex: Matching two words in order in the same line

I would like to find lines in files that include two words, word_1 and word_2 in order, such as in Line A below, but not as in Line B or Line C: Line A: ... word_1 .... word_2 .... Line B: ... word_1 .... Line …

Read More
How to truncate long matching lines returned by grep or ack

I want to run ack or grep on HTML files that often have very long lines. I don't want to see very long lines that wrap repeatedly. But I do want to see just that portion of a long line …

Read More