git wildcard - remove all instances of a subdirectory

Question

I am trying to execute git rm --cached -r <folder> to remove all instances of a folder named .svn recursively. I have tried this:

.svn
/.svn
/*/.svn
/*/*/.svn

etc 

And it works, but I'm sure there is a more dynamic way.

Thanks

Answer 1

The right solution would be:

find . -type d -name '.svn' -print0 | xargs -0 git rm --cached -r --

@gregor's will fail on the directories with spaces.

Answer 2

find, pipes and xargs are your friends:

find . -name .svn | xargs git rm -r 

Answer 3

If you don't have any other changes in your worktree (you can stash them first), there's probably an easier way:

find -type d -name .svn -delete
git add -u
git commit -m 'remove svn folders -- no idea which maniac would stage them'

If you only want to unstage them, but not physically delete them, go with anton's answer:

find -type d -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 git rm -r --cached