How to ignore some directories with find-grep-dired?

Question

When I search with find-grep-dired it also searches /Library/ directory and finds hundreds of cached links. Is there a way to ignore /Library/ directory?

I found this :

M-x customize-option
<return>
grep-find-ignored-directories

But it didn't work for me. Is grep-find-ignored-directories depracated?

I will remove my documents file from the root directory eventually so I don't have to search the entire disc but a solution now would be helpful.

Answer 1

If you use library find-dired+.el (see also Locate Files Anywhere), then you can exclude any number of paths, and you can limit the depth.

find-grep-dired is an interactive compiled Lisp function in find-dired+.el.

It is bound to menu-bar search find find-grep-dired, menu-bar subdir find find-grep-dired.

(find-grep-dired DIR REGEXP &optional DEPTH-LIMITS EXCLUDED-PATHS)

Use Dired on the list of files in DIR whose contents match REGEXP.

The find command run (after changing into DIR) is essentially this, where LS-SWITCHES is (car find-ls-option):

find . \( -type f -exec grep grep-program find-grep-options \
     -e REGEXP {} \; \) LS-SWITCHES

Thus REGEXP can also contain additional grep options.

Optional arg DEPTH-LIMITS is a list (MIN-DEPTH MAX-DEPTH) of the minimum and maximum depths. If nil, search directory tree under DIR.

**Optional arg EXCLUDED-PATHS is a list of strings that match paths to exclude from the search. If nil, search all directories.

When both optional args are non-nil, the find command run is this:

find .
     -mindepth MIN-DEPTH -maxdepth MAX-DEPTH
     \( -path EXCLUDE1 -o -path EXCLUDE2 ... \)
     -prune -o -exec grep-program find-grep-options -e REGEXP {} \;
     LS-SWITCHES

where EXCLUDE1, EXCLUDE2... are the EXCLUDED-PATHS, but shell-quoted.