diff --git a/.astylerc b/.astylerc
index 2c3b9de44..29e73728b 100644
--- a/.astylerc
+++ b/.astylerc
@@ -22,5 +22,4 @@ lineend=linux # LF line endings
 
 # General options
 suffix=none
-recursive
 formatted
diff --git a/scripts/check_format.sh b/scripts/check_format.sh
index e067c620f..a4dd1fdad 100755
--- a/scripts/check_format.sh
+++ b/scripts/check_format.sh
@@ -16,9 +16,8 @@ if hash astyle; then
 	#  as-is to enable ongoing work to synch with a generic upstream DPDK vhost library,
 	#  rather than making diffs more complicated by a lot of changes to follow SPDK
 	#  coding standards.
-	astyle --options=.astylerc "*.c" --exclude="rte_vhost" >> astyle.log
-	astyle --options=.astylerc --exclude=test/cpp_headers "*.cpp" >> astyle.log
-	astyle --options=.astylerc "*.h" --exclude="rte_vhost" >> astyle.log
+	git ls-files '*.[ch]' '*.cpp' | grep -v rte_vhost | grep -v cpp_headers | \
+		xargs astyle --options=.astylerc >> astyle.log
 	if grep -q "^Formatted" astyle.log; then
 		echo " errors detected"
 		git diff