How to ignore certain filenames using "find"?

Solution 1:

You can use the negate (!) feature of find to not match files with specific names:

find . ! -name '*.html' ! -path '*.svn*' -exec grep 'SearchString' {} /dev/null \;

So if the name ends in .html or contains .svn anywhere in the path, it will not match, and so the exec will not be executed.

I've had the same issue for a long time, and there are several solutions which can be applicable in different situations:

ack-grep is a sort of "developer's grep" which by default skips version control directories and temporary files. The man page explains how to search only specific file types and how to define your own.
grep's own --exclude and --exclude-dir options can be used very easily to skip file globs and single directories (no globbing for directories, unfortunately).
find . \( -type d -name '.svn' -o -type f -name '*.html' \) -prune -o -print0 | xargs -0 grep ... should work, but the above options are probably less of a hassle in the long run.