{"id":12607,"date":"2019-03-28T03:37:38","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T03:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/?p=12607"},"modified":"2019-03-28T03:37:38","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T03:37:38","slug":"ways-to-use-find-command-to-search-directories-more-efficiently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/2019\/03\/28\/ways-to-use-find-command-to-search-directories-more-efficiently\/","title":{"rendered":"Ways to Use \u2018find\u2019 Command to Search Directories More Efficiently"},"content":{"rendered":"

This tutorial will take you through the different ways of finding a directory in Linux. As you may already know, in\u00a0Linux everything is a file<\/a>\u00a0including directories. And one of the common things a Linux user will do within the command line is\u00a0searching for a file or a directory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are several different means and utilities used for searching for files on the command line such as\u00a0find<\/a>,\u00a0locate<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0which<\/strong>. However, the last utility (which<\/strong>) is only used for locating a command.<\/p>\n

For the scope of this tutorial, we will mainly focus on the\u00a0find utility<\/a>, which searches files on a live Linux filesystem and is more efficient and reliable as compared to\u00a0locate<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The downside of\u00a0locate<\/strong>\u00a0is that it reads one or more databases created by\u00a0updatedb<\/strong>, it does not search through a live filesystem. In addition, it does not as well offer flexibility regarding where to search from (starting point).<\/p>\n

Below is the syntax for running\u00a0locate<\/strong>\u00a0command:<\/p>\n

# locate [option] [search-pattern]\r\n<\/pre>\n
To demonstrate the disadvantage of\u00a0locate<\/strong>, let us assume we are searching for a directory named\u00a0pkg<\/code>\u00a0in the current working directory.<\/p>\n
Note<\/strong>: In the command below, the option\u00a0--basename<\/code>\u00a0or\u00a0-b<\/code>\u00a0tells\u00a0locate<\/strong>\u00a0to only match the file (directory) basename (which is exactly\u00a0pkg<\/strong>) but not the path (\/path\/to\/pkg<\/strong>). Where\u00a0\\<\/code>\u00a0is a globbing character, it disables the implicit replacement of\u00a0pkg<\/strong>\u00a0by\u00a0*pkg*<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
$ locate --basename '\\pkg'\r\n<\/pre>\n
\n
\"Find<\/a><\/p>\n
Find Directory Using locate Command<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
As you can see from the command output above,\u00a0locate<\/strong>\u00a0will search beginning from the root\u00a0(\/)<\/strong>\u00a0directory, that is why other directories with the same name are matched.<\/p>\n
Therefore, to deal with this issue, use\u00a0find<\/strong>\u00a0by following the simplified syntax below:<\/p>\n
$ find starting-point options [expression]\r\n<\/pre>\n
Let us look at a few examples.<\/p>\n
To search for the same directory\u00a0(pkg)<\/code>\u00a0above, within the current working directory, run the following command, where the\u00a0-name<\/code>\u00a0flag reads the expression which in this case is the directory basename.<\/p>\n
$ find . -name \"pkg\"\r\n<\/pre>\n
If you encounter \u201cPermission denied<\/strong>\u201d errors, use\u00a0sudo command\u00a0<\/a>like so:<\/p>\n
$ sudo find . -name \"pkg\"\r\n<\/pre>\n
\n
\"Search<\/a><\/p>\n
Search a Directory Using find Command<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
You can prevent\u00a0find from searching for other file types<\/a>\u00a0except directories by using\u00a0-type<\/code>\u00a0flag to specify the type of file (in the command below\u00a0d<\/code>\u00a0means directory) as follows:<\/p>\n
$ sudo find . -type d -name \"pkg\"\r\n<\/pre>\n
Furthermore, if you wish to\u00a0list the directory in a long listing format<\/a>, employ the action switch\u00a0-ls<\/code>:<\/p>\n
$ sudo find . -type d -name \"pkg\" -ls\r\n<\/pre>\n
\n
\"Find<\/a><\/p>\n
Find and List Directory<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Next, the option\u00a0-iname<\/code>\u00a0will enable a case insensitive search:<\/p>\n
$ sudo find . -type d -iname \"pkg\" \r\n$ sudo find . -type d -iname \"PKG\" \r\n<\/pre>\n
\n
\"Find<\/a><\/p>\n
Find Directory with Case Sensitive<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
To find more interesting and advanced usage information, read the man pages of\u00a0find<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0locate<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
$ man find\r\n$ man locate\r\n<\/pre>\n
As a last remark, the\u00a0find command<\/a>\u00a0is more reliable and efficient for searching files ( or directories) in a Linux system when weighed against the\u00a0locate<\/strong>\u00a0command.<\/p>\n
Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This tutorial will take you through the different ways of finding a directory in Linux. As you may already know, in\u00a0Linux everything is a file\u00a0including directories. And one of the common things a Linux user will do within the command line is\u00a0searching for a file or a directory. There are several different means and utilities … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Ways to Use \u2018find\u2019 Command to Search Directories More Efficiently”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12608,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12607\/revisions\/12608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}