[Cialug] Help finding file?

[Don Ellis]

The grep is not necessary; it can be included in the find command itself:

    find / -name \*partial_name\*

That last element (the -name field) accepts a number of shell pattern
matching characters (not a regex, but good enough for most file name
patterns).

>From the find man page:

     -name pattern
             True if the last component of the pathname being examined matches
             pattern.  Special shell pattern matching characters (``['', ``]'',
             ``*'', and ``?'') may be used as part of pattern.  These characters
             may be matched explicitly by escaping them with a
backslash (``\'').

There are some other options visible on the man page. -exec allows
executing a command on each item found, -ls produces a listing much
like 'ls -l'.

--Don Ellis


On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 3:43 PM, kristau <kristau at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are several ways to skin that particular cat. This is the one I use
> most often:
>
> find / | grep -i <partial file name>
>
> On Jan 2, 2012 3:37 PM, "Tom Sellers" <tomsellers2001 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> What is the Ubuntu linux command to locate a file anywhere on the disk?  I
>> need to have it search the whole directory structure not just the current
>> directory for the file.
>>
>> If I use find by itself it lists all directory items but it I list the
>> file name after the find command it only seems to search the local directory
>> and tells me that it is not there.
>>
>> Surely there is a command to do this.  I just haven't been able to find
>> it.