How to exclude/ignore hidden files and directories in a wildcard-embedded "find" search?

This prints all files that are descendants of your directory, skipping hidden files and directories:

find . -not -path '*/.*'

So if you're looking for a file with some text in its name, and you want to skip hidden files and directories, run:

find . -not -path '*/.*' -type f -name '*some text*'

Explanation:

The -path option runs checks a pattern against the entire path string. * is a wildcard, / is a directory separator, . is a dot (hidden filenames start with a dot on Linux), and * is another wildcard. -not means don't select files that match this test.

I don't think that find is smart enough to avoid recursively searching hidden directories in the previous command, so if you need speed, use -prune instead, like this:

 find . -type d -path '*/.*' -prune -o -not -name '.*' -type f -name '*some text*' -print

This is one of the few means of excludes dot-files that also works correctly on BSD, Mac and Linux:

find "$PWD" -name ".*" -prune -o -print

• $PWD print the full path to the current directory so that the path does not start with ./
• -name ".*" -prune matches any files or directories that start with a dot and then don't descend
• -o -print means print the file name if the previous expression did not match anything. Using -print or -print0 causes all other expressions to not print by default.

You don't have to use find for that. Just use globstar in shell it-self, like:

echo **/*foo*

or:

ls **/*foo*

where **/ represents any folder recursively and *foo* any file which has foo in its name.

By default using ls will print file names excluding hidden files and directories.

If you don't have globbing enabled, do it by shopt -s globstar.

^{Note: A new globbing option works in Bash 4, zsh and similar shells.}

Example:

$ mkdir -vp a/b/c/d
mkdir: created directory 'a'
mkdir: created directory 'a/b'
mkdir: created directory 'a/b/c'
mkdir: created directory 'a/b/c/d'
$ touch a/b/c/d/foo a/b/c/d/bar  a/b/c/d/.foo_hidden a/b/c/d/foo_not_hidden
$ echo **/*foo*
a/b/c/d/foo  a/b/c/d/foo_not_hidden

find $DIR -not -path '*/\.*' -type f \( ! -iname ".*" \)

Excludes all hidden directories, and hidden files under $DIR

^{The answer I originally posted as an "edit" to my original question above:}

find . \( ! -regex '.*/\..*' \) -type f -name "whatever", works. The regex looks for "anything, then a slash, then a dot, then anything" (i.e. all hidden files and folders including their subfolders), and the "!" negates the regex.

@Flimm's answer is good, particularly because it prevents find from descending into hidden directories. I prefer this simplification:

Generally to exclude all hidden paths (regular files, directories, etc):

find <start-point> -path '*/.*' -prune -o <expression> -print

For example, using your working directory as the start point, and -name '*some text*' as the expression:

find . -path '*/.*' -prune -o -name '*some text*' -print

In contrast to what @Flimm's answer suggests, no hidden files or hidden directories is the simple case. The -path '*/.*' expression is true for any path (regular files, directories, etc) that has a . immediately after your file separator, /. So this line will prune both hidden files and directories.

Allowing hidden files while excluding hidden directories is the case that requires a further filter. This is where you would include -type d in the the expression being pruned.

find <start-point> -type d -path '*/.*' -prune -o <expression> -print 

For example:

find . -type d -path '*/.*' -prune -o -name '*some text*' -print

In this case -type d -path '*/.*' is true only for directories, and so only directories are pruned.

This usually works too

find * [expression]

Using * shell wildcard for input all paths from working directory, usually * wildcard doesn't expand to hidden files but this could be changed in the shell options. Example:

find /path/* -iname file -mtime -3

A variant on https://askubuntu.com/a/749708/321070

find  -name '.?*' -prune -o -print

Instead of setting the directory to a full path, instead filter out things that mat ch .?* - a literal dot, any character, and then 0 or more characters.

find has neat logic switches such as -and and -not you can use them to your advantage to find a matching file with two rules like so:

$ touch non_hidden_file.txt .hidden_file.txt somethings/.another_hidden_file.txt                                                 

$ find . -type f -name '*hidden_file*' -and \( -not -name ".*" \)                            
./non_hidden_file.txt

As you can see, find uses two rules -name '*hidden_file*' and -and \( -not -name ".*" \) to find those filenames that match both conditions - filename with hidden_file in it but without leading dot. Note the slashes in front of parenthesis - they are used to define parenthesis as find arguments rather defining a subshell (which is what parenthesis mean otherwise without slashes)

$ pwd
/home/victoria

$ find $(pwd) -maxdepth 1 -type f -not -path '*/\.*' | sort
/home/victoria/new
/home/victoria/new1
/home/victoria/new2
/home/victoria/new3
/home/victoria/new3.md
/home/victoria/new.md
/home/victoria/package.json
/home/victoria/Untitled Document 1
/home/victoria/Untitled Document 2

$ find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -not -path '*/\.*' | sed 's/^\.\///g' | sort
new
new1
new2
new3
new3.md
new.md
package.json
Untitled Document 1
Untitled Document 2

Notes:

• . : current folder
• remove -maxdepth 1 to search recursively
• -type f : find files, not directories (d)
• -not -path '*/\.*' : do not return .hidden_files
• sed 's/^\.\///g' : remove the prepended ./ from the result list