How can I recursive grep excluding the symlinks?

Hi ganjos,

Would this not go into the symlink directory or just hide the results?
I need grep not even to go into the symlink directory, as there are symlinks that point to itself.

Thanks
Jamie

No, symlink is not a directory, it is a file.

Basically, symlink links two files, but if the target is a directory, another file named "source file" is created in target and linked to the original "source file". So eventually links two files as well.

You can do a quick test in /usr/bin directory with the command. Hopefully this answered your question.

Ah i see.
Thanks!

That works

I thought you wanted to do a recursive grep and not a recursive ls.

For a recursive grep excluding symlinks, just do:

find . -type f | xargs grep string