.-- .. - .... .-.. --- ...- .

When we want to look for some string patterns from files in a source code repository, say a Git repository. We often want to ignore those hidden directories such as .git, .github, etc.

The following command will do:

cd the-repository-directory/
find . \( -path ./.idea -o -path ./.git -o -path ./.github \) -prune -o \
    -type f -exec grep -I your-string-here {} +

In this command, those .idea, .git, and .github are common hidden directories that we usually don't want to look in.