FINDSTR and skipping folders

Question

I'm new to Windows batch programming and to Stack Overflow, so please forgive me if I ask anything that's blatantly obvious to you seasoned, talented folks. I'm using Windows batch (.bat) to find files containing a certain string using findstr. However, I'm trying to skip certain folders within a directory.

setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set basedir=C:\folder

for /f %%g in ('dir /a:-h /b %basedir% ^| findstr /v "Projects" ^| findstr /v "Archive"') do (
    findstr /i /m /s /c:"request" %basedir%\%%g *.* > %basedir%\Projects\list.txt
)

When I look in list.txt, the file output from findstr, I find that the folders I told it not to search were searched. That is, the output looks like this:

C:\folder\somefile.rtf
C:\folder\Requests\anotherfile.rtf
C:\folder\Projects\dontsearchme.txt
C:\folder\Archive\dontsearchmeeither.txt
C:\folder\Archive\Projects\dontsearchme.txt

If it had worked correctly, only C:\folder\somefile.rtf and C:\folder\Requests\anotherfile.rtf would have been included in list.txt. To test the looping code, I used the following:

setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set basedir=C:\folder

for /f %%g in ('dir /a:-h /b %basedir% ^| findstr /v "Projects" ^| findstr /v "Archive"') do (
    echo %basedir%\%%g
)

That code works as desired; it skips the Projects and Archive folders. I assume that the problem has something to do with how I'm calling findstr but I haven't been able to identify the error of my ways. Any insight would be much appreciated!

Thanks so much!
-Alex

Answer 1

The FINDSTR /S option is causing it to search all folders, thus bypassing the intent of your FOR loop.

Stephan did successfully diagnose another problem with your code regarding redirection using overwrite instead of append mode.

But there is a much simpler method to get your desired result. Simply let FINDSTR search all folders, and pipe the result to an additional FINDSTR to remove results containing the unwanted folders. Since there is no loop, you can safely use owverwrite mode for redirection.

findstr /misl request "%basedir%\*" | findstr /liv "\\projects\\ \\archive\\" >"%basedir%\Projects\list.txt"

---

EDIT

The above simple solution will waste time searching folders that will later get excluded. This could waste valuable time if those folders are huge.

The following script will not bother scanning the "%basedir%\Projects" or "%basedir%\Archive" folders.

@echo off
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set basedir=C:\folder

>"%basedir%\Projects\list.txt" (
  findstr /mil request "%basedir%\*"
  for /f "eol=: delims=" %%F in (
    'dir /a:d-h /b %basedir% ^| findstr /vixl "projects archive"'
  ) do findstr /smil request "%basedir%\%%F\*"
)

If you want to skip all folders named "Projects" or "Archive", regardless where they appear in the tree, then:

@echo off
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set basedir=C:\folder

>"%basedir%\Projects\list.txt" (
  findstr /mil request "%basedir%\*"
  for /f "eol=: delims=" %%F in (
    'dir /s /a:d-h /b %basedir% ^| findstr /vir "[\\]projects[\\] [\\]archive[\\] [\\]projects$ [\\]archive$"'
  ) do findstr /mil request "%%F\*"
)

Answer 2

I had a similar problem: I needed to use findstr to search all .js files except those in the node_modules folder (i.e., I wanted to search my code, but not the code of any imported modules). This is the command I used:

dir /S /B *.js | findstr /v /i node_modules | findstr /i /F:/ todo

Breaking that down:

• dir /S /B *.js will output the full path of all .js files in the current directory and all subdirectories
• findstr /v /i node_modules filters that list of paths and removes any path that contains the string "node_modules". (The /v flag makes findstr output lines that do not match.)
• findstr /i /F:/ todo - The "/F:/" tells findstr to accept a list of file paths to search from the console.

So, only files that make it through the "node_modules" filter get searched.