How do I permanently exclude a folder from a search

Question

I'm trying to exclude a set of folders from my search called 'generated-sources'. They could be at different depths within the folder hierachy. I've tried creating a regex based Persistent Search Filter .*\\generated-sources\\.* but that doesn't work.

Answer 1

You're missing the '+' or '-' to show what type of filter it is (inclusion or exclusion). Instead try this: -generated-sources

The filter is then applied against every search folder and because the '-' specifies an exclusion filter any folder with generated-sources in its path would be excluded from the search.

Your regular expression .*\\generated-sources\\.* would still work with the '-' applied, ie -.*\\generated-sources\\.*, but the solution above is a little simpler and therefore a little faster.

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More information

To understand how Persistent Search Filters are applied imagine that they are simply appended to the end of your search path. So if you were searching in C:\My\Folders and had both the 'SVN/HG' and 'Recycle bin' filters applied, internally the Look In functionality would be:

C:\My\Folders;-:regex:\\(\.svn|\.hg|\.git|cvs)\\;-recycle

You may have noticed a little undocumented feature here. The filter can specify the expression type as part of the filter, in this case :regex: specified that the filter should be treated as a regular expression. The complete list of filter expression types are:

• :bool: - Boolean expression
• :boolre: - Boolean RegEx
• :regex: - Regular expression
• :word: - Whole word
• :dos: - DOS expression