I am searching through a Ruby on Rails application for a word using grep, and I would like to exclude directories that match a certain pattern.

I am using the following command:

grep -inRw -E 'direct' . --exclude-dir -E 'git|log|asset'

This command is not doing what I thought it would do. Here is how I thought it would work:

• i - case insensitive search
• n - print line number in which pattern is found
• R - search recursively
• w - I only want whole words - i.e., match "direct" but not "directory"
• -E - use extended regular expression
• 'direct' - the regular expression I want to match
• . - search in the current directory
• --exclude-dir -E 'git|log|asset' - exclude directories that match git or log or asset.

In terms of the exclude directories, the command still ends up searching in the './git' and './log' directories, as well as in './app/assets'

I'm obviously lacking a fundamental piece of knowledge, but I do not know what it is.

I am searching through a Ruby on Rails application for a word using grep on OSX, and I would like to exclude directories that match a certain pattern.

I am using the following command:

grep -inRw -E 'direct' . --exclude-dir -E 'git|log|asset'

This command is not doing what I thought it would do. Here is how I thought it would work:

• i - case insensitive search
• n - print line number in which pattern is found
• R - search recursively
• w - I only want whole words - i.e., match "direct" but not "directory"
• -E - use extended regular expression
• 'direct' - the regular expression I want to match
• . - search in the current directory
• --exclude-dir -E 'git|log|asset' - exclude directories that match git or log or asset.

In terms of the exclude directories, the command still ends up searching in the './git' and './log' directories, as well as in './app/assets'

I'm obviously lacking a fundamental piece of knowledge, but I do not know what it is.