searching for a file in unix ..

jackdaw

how can isearch all directories for a speciifc file in unix ?

something like ls -al "filename"

??

Talon.ie

The command you're looking for is the 'find' command. Typing 'man find' at the command prompt will show you the correct syntax for what you want to do.

marco_polo

jackdaw wrote: »

how can isearch all directories for a speciifc file in unix ?

something like ls -al "filename"

??

find . -name "file"

If you are getting alot of annoying "cannot read dir /blah/blah Permission denied" errors you can supress them like this.

find . -name "file" 2>/dev/null

Evil Phil

This is more of a Unix issue than a programming one. Gentlemen, start your beards :pac:

2 Espressi

How about:

# cd to root dir

cd /

# recursive ls, filter with grep
ls -laR |grep filename

conceited

Gentlemen, start your beards

Haha.

Orion

First update the file database:

'sudo updatedb'

then

'locate filename'

[edit]you can probably scratch all that - I assumed Linux not Unix).

leeroybrown

2 Espressi wrote: »

How about:

# cd to root dir

cd /

# recursive ls, filter with grep
ls -laR |grep filename

Slow with a big overhead and a decent chance of false positives. The 'find' command is quicker, more likely to be right and far more powerful.

An example was already given above:

find . -name "file"

A more complex example:

find ~/public_html/ -type d -exec chmod o+x {} \;

This would add world execute permissions to all directories in my public_html directory as required for web access.

The 'magic' thing about the -exec option to find is that you don't have to worry about spaces and other characters that would break a piped command. It just works.

pickarooney

Google desktop for linux.
Or slocate, if you want to keep it simple.