Find which files within a directory do not contain a match to a regex string

Question

I thought that maybe grep -v "<ignore file with this text>" $(ls) might work, but it ends up returning every single line within each file that does not match the text. What I want is for the file to be ignored if it contains any number of matches. As follows

Input

file1<-- matches
file2
file3<-- matches
file4<-- matches
file5

Output

file2
file5

Don't use `ls + grep`. Use `find` with `-not -name` option or `-not -regex` — anubhava, May 26 '21 at 05:35
@anubhava Is there any specific reason to use `find` instead of `ls` + `grep`? — Kalcifer, May 26 '21 at 06:53
[Why you shouldn't parse the output of `ls`](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs) — anubhava, May 26 '21 at 06:54

ap-osd · Answer 1 · 2021-05-26T05:54:37.760

Use the -l (lower case L) option with -v invert match.

-l, --files-with-matches Suppress normal output; instead print the name of each input file from which output would normally have been printed.

grep -vl "<ignore file with this text>" $(ls)

OR

Use the -L (upper case L) option

-L, --files-without-match Suppress normal output; instead print the name of each input file from which no output would normally have been printed.

grep -L "<ignore file with this text>" $(ls)

Find which files within a directory do not contain a match to a regex string

1 Answers1