The generic syntax of the find command according to its manual is the following: find PATH In this case the criteria is that the filename matches “findme.txt”. This is the perfect opportunity to use the find command that, as mentioned in the previous section, allows to find files and directories on Linux based on certain criteria. I want to find a file called findme.txt on my Linux system but I don’t know the exact directory for the file. ![]() Let’s have a deeper understanding of this with some examples! Find Command: Search For Files Based on Their Name based on their name) while grep returns files whose content matches the pattern you are looking for. In other words, find returns files and directories in the filesystem based on your search criteria (e.g. The difference can be subtle if you don’t have a lot of experience with Linux. filename, modify date, size, file type, etc…), grep is a utility to search for patterns in the content of files or in the output of other commands. What is the difference between the grep and find commands?įind is a utility to search for files and directories in the Linux filesystem based on certain criteria (e.g. It seemed obvious to me, but maybe it’s not if you are getting started with Linux. I have heard people asking what is the difference between grep and find multiple times in the last few years. This results in this very different output: That's nice, but what if I want to see the last modification time of these files, or their filesize? No problem, I just add the ls -ld command to my find command, like this: In my current directory, the output of this command looks like this: To get started, this find command will find all the *.pl files (Perl files) beneath the current directory: type f -name "*.java" -exec grep -l StringBuffer \ įrom time to time I run the find command with the ls command so I can get detailed information about files the find command locates. type f -not -name "*.html" # find all files not ending in ".html"įind files by text in the file (find + grep)įind. type f \( -name "*cache" -o -name "*xml" -o -name "*html" \) # three patternsįind files that don't match a pattern (-not)įind. iname foo -type f # same thing, but only filesįind. iname foo -type d # same thing, but only dirsįind. iname foo # find foo, Foo, FOo, FOO, etc.įind. name foo.txt # search under the current dirįind /users/al -name Cookbook -type d # search '/users/al' dirįind /opt /usr /var -name foo.scala -type f # search multiple dirsįind. ![]() ![]() Almost every command is followed by a short description to explain the command others are described more fully at the URLs shown:įind / -name foo.txt -type f -print # full commandįind / -name foo.txt -type f # -print isn't necessaryįind / -name foo.txt # don't have to specify "type=file"įind. If you just want to see some examples and skip the reading, here are a little more than thirty Linux find command examples to get you started. In this article I’ll take a look at the most common uses of the find command. It can search the entire filesystem to find files and directories according to the search criteria you specify. Besides using the find command to locate files, you can also use it to execute other Linux commands ( grep, mv, rm, etc.) on the files and directories that are found, which makes find even more powerful. ![]() Linux/Unix FAQ: Can you share some Linux find command examples?
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