Visual Studio Code: Search Within Files but Exclude Folder

Question

In Visual Studio Code (not to be confused with Visual Studio) there is a search interface (click the mag glass at top left).

It has a "files to include" field, and a "files to exclude" field.

I know that I can include or exclude a file from my search by entering the name of the file, or using a wildcard like *.js.

Is there a way to specifically include or exclude a directory by using these fields? If not, how would I do that?

Edit: Some have said that this question may be similar to How can I choose folders to be ignored during search?

I think it is fundamentally the same question, but as I said in a recent comment on that question: "There is nothing in the title of this question to indicate that you are asking a question about a specific tool (Visual Studio Code). And while you do have it tagged visual-studio-code - making it appear in searches about that tool - the searcher will not necessarily know that this question is about VS Code. Also, you use a Mac specific keyboard command that is not really relevant to the question at hand, and makes the question seem non-relevant to non-Mac users."

So, yes, I guess it's the same question. But I don't think it's reasonable to expect me to have found it.

Answer 1

you could either change the global settings (CTRL + , by default), for example to ignore anything in node_modules

"search.exclude": { "**/node_modules": true }

Or if you don't want to set a global setting, you can just add the foldername\* to the "files to exclude" field. So in our example

files to exclude node_modules\*

Hope this helps anyone searching for it in the future.

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For reference: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/codebasics#_advanced-search-options