If your grep has -P, then you could do all in one go with lookahead assertions... grep -P '(?=.*pattern1)(?=.*pattern2)(?!.*exclude_these)' **/* Maybe no

If your grep has -P, then you could do all in one go with lookahead assertions... grep -P '(?=.*pattern1)(?=.*pattern2)(?!.*exclude_these)' **/* Maybe not the most beautiful or easy to have at the fingertips, but could be worse.