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I usually use grep when developing, and there are some extensions that I always want to exclude (like *.pyc).

Is it possible to create a ~/.egreprc or something like that, and add filtering to exclude pyc files from all results?

Is this possible, or will I have to create an alias for using grep in this manner, and call the alias instead of grep?

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5 Answers 5

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No, there's no rc file for grep.

GNU grep 2.4 through 2.21 applied options from the environment variable GREP_OPTIONS, but more recent versions no longer honor it.

For interactive use, define an alias in your shell initialization file (.bashrc or .zshrc). I use a variant of the following:

alias regrep='grep -Er --exclude=*~ --exclude=*.pyc --exclude-dir=.bzr --exclude-dir=.git --exclude-dir=.svn'

If you call the alias grep, and you occasionally want to call grep without the options, type \grep. The backslash bypasses the alias.

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    This is THE answer I was looking for. I think I'll read more about ~/.profile. @Gilles, you're the man. Thanks for helping!
    – Somebody still uses you MS-DOS
    Commented Feb 25, 2011 at 20:26
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    Considering there are two possibilites to do this (GREP_OPTIONS and alias grep): Is one of them preferred? Why or why not?
    – Christoph Wurm
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 19:54
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    @Legate: An important difference is that GREP_OPTIONS will affect grep calls in scripts, while an alias won't. So GREP_OPTIONS should be used sparingly. The most common use is for --color=auto, which is in principle harmless in scripts because it only takes effect if the output is a terminal.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 20:14
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    GREP_OPTIONS is deprecated; please use an alias or script
    – Zombo
    Commented Nov 20, 2016 at 13:39
  • @oalders I've updated my answer.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Apr 24, 2020 at 20:28
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ack can do what you want and more.

It will ignore binary files by default and you can tell it to ignore other filetypes as you want --notext, --nohtml, etc. It has the ability to define an rc file too so you can customize it with your own types.

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  • I'm using ack too, but I didn't like it. It's indeed fast, but it's not available in all installations, so I was thinking about grep. Thanks!
    – Somebody still uses you MS-DOS
    Commented Feb 25, 2011 at 19:23
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    ack is a single Perl program, downloadable as a plain text file. If you want, you can go to betterthangrep.com/ack-standalone and cut & paste the contents into a file. I specifically made it so that it is available anywhere you can run Perl.
    – Andy Lester
    Commented Feb 26, 2011 at 3:52
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Not a direct answer to your question. But grep has an option to ignore all binary files including *.pyc. The option is -I

grep -rI hello .
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Not in GNU grep/egrep, there isn't.

You probably want a specially-named alias or script to do this anyway, because someday later you might find yourself very confused when trying to look in something that you forgot matches your special configuration.

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    GREP_OPTIONS in ~/.profile comes close.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Feb 25, 2011 at 20:06
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    @Gilles — good point. In fact, I forgot that I have that set myself for --color=auto!
    – mattdm
    Commented Feb 25, 2011 at 20:14
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Since at least 2016 (according to Steven Penny's comment), the grep-recommended way of doing this is with an alias or script:

$ export GREP_OPTIONS="--exclude='*~'"
$ grep -r someStringThatDoesNotExist
grep: warning: GREP_OPTIONS is deprecated; please use an alias or script
$
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