find program is
a search utility, mostly found on Unix-like platforms. It searches through a
directory tree of a filesystem, locating files based on some user-specified
criteria. By default, find returns all files below the current working
directory. Further, find allows the user to specify an action to be taken on
each matched file. Thus, it is an extremely powerful program for applying
actions to many files. It also supports regexp matching.
Examples
From current directory
find . -name my\*
This searches in the current directory (represented by a
period) and below it, for files and directories with names starting with my.
The backslash before the star is needed to avoid the shell expansion. Without
the backslash, the shell would replace my* with the list of files whose
names begin with my in the current directory. An alternative is to
enclose the the arguments in quotes: find . -name "my*"
Files only
find . -name "my*" -type f
This limits the results of the above search to only
regular files, therefore excluding directories, special files, pipes, symbolic
links, etc. my* is enclosed in quotes as otherwise the shell would
replace it with the list of files in the current directory starting with my
Commands
The previous examples created listings of results
because, by default, find executes the '-print' action. (Note that early
versions of the find command had no default action at all; therefore the resulting
list of files would be discarded, to the bewilderment of naïve users.)
find . -name "my*" -type f -ls
This prints an extended file information.
Search all directories
find / -name "myfile" -type f -print
This searches every file on the computer for a file with
the name myfile. It is generally not a good idea to look for data files
this way. This can take a considerable amount of time, so it is best to specify
the directory more precisely.
Specify a directory
find /home/MyBasicKnowledge -name "myfile" -type f -print
This searches for files named myfile in the /home/MyBasicKnowledge directory, which is the home directory for the user MyBasicKnowledge. You should
always specify the directory to the deepest level you can remember.
Find any one of differently named files
find . ( -name "*jsp" -or -name
"*java" ) -type f -ls
This prints extended information on any file whose name
ends with either 'jsp' or 'java'. Note that the parentheses are required. Also
note that the operator "or" can be abbreviated as "o". The
"and" operator is assumed where no operator is given. In many shells
the parentheses must be escaped with a backslash, "\(" and
"\)", to prevent them from being interpreted as special shell characters.
