How do I search files without certain extensions in their names?

Question

I would like to search recursively in all the files and directories under a directory for some strings e.g. library.

I also would like to exclude files and directories which store downloaded webpages but are not .html or .htm files (which are still of my interest), such as:

• files whose filenames have certain extensions, such as .js, .css, .png, .gif,.jpeg, and
• directories whose names are ended with _files.

so how shall I do that? I am thinking about using locate before find, because locate is faster, but I don't know locate can do it or not. Thanks.

Answer 1

Something like this might do what you want:

find . -name '*_files' -type d -prune -o ! \( -name '*.js' -o -name '*.css' -o -name '*.png' -o -name '*.gif' -o -name '*.jpeg' \)

If that prints out a reasonable list then add -print0 | xargs -o grep -i library to do the actual searching.