diff --git a/util/lint/kconfig_lint b/util/lint/kconfig_lint
index 7fa0d8858b..4315768709 100755
--- a/util/lint/kconfig_lint
+++ b/util/lint/kconfig_lint
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 # This file is part of the coreboot project.
 #
 # Copyright (C) 2015 Martin L Roth <gaumless@gmail.com>
-# Copyright (C) 2015 Google, Inc.
+# Copyright (C) 2015-2016 Google, Inc.
 #
 # This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
@@ -38,11 +38,10 @@ my $top_dir        = ".";             # Directory where Kconfig is run
 my $root_dir       = "src";           # Directory of the top level Kconfig file
 my $errors_found   = 0;               # count of errors
 my $warnings_found = 0;
-my $exclude_dirs =
-    '--exclude-dir="build" --exclude-dir="coreboot-builds" '
-  . '--exclude-dir="payloads" --exclude-dir="configs" '
-  . '--exclude-dir="util"';    # directories to exclude when searching for used symbols - NOT USED FOR GIT GREP (TODO)
-my @exclude_files = ( '\.txt$', '\.tex$', 'config', '\.tags' );    #files to exclude when looking for symbols
+my $exclude_dirs_and_files =
+  '^build/\|^coreboot-builds/\|^payloads/libpayload\|^payloads/coreinfo\|^configs/\|^util/\|^\.git/'
+  . '\|' .                            # directories to exclude when searching for used symbols
+  '\.txt$\|\.tex$\|\.tags';           #files to exclude when looking for symbols
 my $config_file = "";                                              # name of config file to load symbol values from.
 my @wholeconfig;           # document the entire kconfig structure
 my %loaded_files;          # list of each Kconfig file loaded
@@ -345,10 +344,10 @@ sub collect_used_symbols {
     # find all references to CONFIG_ statements in the tree
 
     if ($dont_use_git_grep) {
-        @collected_symbols = `grep -Irn $exclude_dirs -- "CONFIG_"`;
+        @collected_symbols = `grep -Irn -- "CONFIG_" | grep -v '$exclude_dirs_and_files'`;
     }
     else {
-        @collected_symbols = `git grep -In -- "CONFIG_"`;
+        @collected_symbols = `git grep -In -- "CONFIG_" | grep -v '$exclude_dirs_and_files'`;
     }
 
     my @used_symbols = @collected_symbols;
@@ -362,13 +361,6 @@ sub collect_used_symbols {
                 $filename = $1;
             }
 
-            my $skip = 0;
-            foreach my $exfile (@exclude_files) {
-                $skip = ( $filename =~ /$exfile/ );
-                last if $skip;
-            }
-            last if $skip;
-
             if ( exists $used_symbols{$symbol}{count} ) {
                 $used_symbols{$symbol}{count}++;
             }