How to Find a File/Directory That Could Be Anywhere on Linux Command Line

How can I find a file/directory that could be anywhere on linux command line?

"Unfortunately this seems to only check the current directory, not the entire folder". Presumably you mean it doesn't look in subdirectories. To fix this, use find -name "filename"

If the file in question is not in the current working directory, you can search your entire machine via

find / -name "filename"

This also works with stuff like find / -name "*.pdf", etc. Sometimes I like to pipe that into a grep statement as well (since, on my machine at least, it highlights the results), so I end up with something like

find / -name "*star*wars*" | grep star

Doing this or a similar method just helps me instantly find the filename and recognize if it is in fact the file I am looking for.

Fast way to find file names in Linux and specify directory

The first / in your command is the base directory from which find will begin searching. You can specify any directory you like, so if you know, for example, that program.c is somewhere in your home directory you could do find ~ -name 'program.c' or if it's in, say, /usr/src do find /usr/src -name 'program.c'

That should help with both 1 and 2.

If you want a command that's not find that can be faster you can check out the mlocate stuff. If you've done a recent updatedb (or had cron do it for you overnight) you can do locate <pattern> and it will show you everywhere that matches that pattern in a file/directory name, and that's usually quite fast.

How to get full path of a file?

Use readlink:

readlink -f file.txt

How can I find a specific file from a Linux terminal?

Find from root path find / -name "index.html"

Find from current path find . -name "index.html"

Equivalent of 'find' for finding directories in the linux terminal?

You can use find for that plus the option -type d (d = only directory, f would return only files).

Use -name "pattern" to search case sensitive. pattern can contain * (any number of unknown characters, including none) or ? (exactly one arbitrary character).

Use -iname "pattern" to search case insensitive.

Example:

find /home -type d -iname "public*html"

will find public_html, publichtml or PublicHtml anywhere under /home

Related:

• 25 simple examples of Linux find command
• 35 Practical Examples of Linux Find Command

Find all files with name containing string

Use find:

find . -maxdepth 1 -name "*string*" -print

It will find all files in the current directory (delete maxdepth 1 if you want it recursive) containing "string" and will print it on the screen.

If you want to avoid file containing ':', you can type:

find . -maxdepth 1 -name "*string*" ! -name "*:*" -print

If you want to use grep (but I think it's not necessary as far as you don't want to check file content) you can use:

ls | grep touch

But, I repeat, find is a better and cleaner solution for your task.

Find files with a specific folder name anywhere in their path

To have FOO anywhere in their full path name:

find . -type f -wholename "*FOO*"

additionally to end with .tif and exclude *v.tif:

find . -type f -wholename "*FOO*[^v].tif"

but the above one excludes the edge case of *FOO.tif, so this is better:

find . -type f -wholename "*FOO*.tif" ! -name "*v.tif"

How to search for a file in the CentOS command line

Try this command:

find / -name file.look

how to search for a directory from the terminal in ubuntu

you can search for directory by using find with flag -name

you should use

find /user -name "sdk" -type d

meaning find directories named sdk in or below the directory /user

or if you want to be case-insensitive

find /user -iname "sdk" -type d

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