We all have files on our computers \u2014 documents, photos, source code, you name it. So many of them. Definitely more than I can remember. And if not challenging, it might be time consuming to find the right one you\u2019re looking for. In this post, we\u2019ll have a look at how to make sense of your files on the command line, and especially how to quickly find the ones you\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n
Good news is there are few quite useful utilities in the Linux commandline designed specifically to look for files on your computer. We\u2019ll have a look at three of those: ls, tree, and find.<\/p>\n
If you know where your files are, and you just need to list them or see information about them, ls is here for you.<\/p>\n
Just running ls lists all visible files and directories in the current directory:<\/p>\n
$ ls
\nDocuments Music Pictures Videos notes.txt<\/p>\n
Adding the -l option shows basic information about the files. And together with the -h option you\u2019ll see file sizes in a human-readable format:<\/p>\n
$ ls -lh
\ntotal 60K
\ndrwxr-xr-x 2 adam adam 4.0K Nov 2 13:07 Documents
\ndrwxr-xr-x 2 adam adam 4.0K Nov 2 13:07 Music
\ndrwxr-xr-x 2 adam adam 4.0K Nov 2 13:13 Pictures
\ndrwxr-xr-x 2 adam adam 4.0K Nov 2 13:07 Videos
\n-rw-r–r– 1 adam adam 43K Nov 2 13:12 notes.txt<\/p>\n
Is can also search a specific place:<\/p>\n
$ ls Pictures\/
\ntrees.png wallpaper.png<\/p>\n
Or a specific file \u2014 even with just a part of the name:<\/p>\n
$ ls *.txt
\nnotes.txt<\/p>\n
Something missing? Looking for a hidden file? No problem, use the -a option:<\/p>\n
$ ls -a
\n. .bash_logout .bashrc Documents Pictures notes.txt
\n.. .bash_profile .vimrc Music Videos<\/p>\n
There are many other useful options for ls, and you can combine them together to achieve what you need. Learn about them by running:<\/p>\n
$ man ls<\/p>\n
If you want to see, well, a tree structure of your files, tree is a good choice. It\u2019s probably not installed by default which you can do yourself using the package manager DNF:<\/p>\n
$ sudo dnf install tree<\/p>\n
Running tree without any options or parameters shows the whole tree starting at the current directory. Just a warning, this output might be huge, because it will include all files and directories:<\/p>\n
$ tree
\n.
\n|– Documents
\n| |– notes.txt
\n| |– secret
\n| | `– christmas-presents.txt
\n| `– work
\n| |– project-abc
\n| | |– README.md
\n| | |– do-things.sh
\n| | `– project-notes.txt
\n| `– status-reports.txt
\n|– Music
\n|– Pictures
\n| |– trees.png
\n| `– wallpaper.png
\n|– Videos
\n`– notes.txt<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s too much, I can limit the number of levels it goes using the -L option followed by a number specifying the number of levels I want to see:<\/p>\n
$ tree -L 2
\n.
\n|– Documents
\n| |– notes.txt
\n| |– secret
\n| `– work
\n|– Music
\n|– Pictures
\n| |– trees.png
\n| `– wallpaper.png
\n|– Videos
\n`– notes.txt<\/p>\n
You can also display a tree of a specific path:<\/p>\n
$ tree Documents\/work\/
\nDocuments\/work\/
\n|– project-abc
\n| |– README.md
\n| |– do-things.sh
\n| `– project-notes.txt
\n`– status-reports.txt<\/p>\n
To browse and search a huge tree, you can use it together with less:<\/p>\n
$ tree | less<\/p>\n
Again, there are other options you can use with three, and you can combine them together for even more power. The manual page has them all:<\/p>\n
$ man tree<\/p>\n
And what about files that live somewhere in the unknown? Let\u2019s find them!<\/p>\n
In case you don\u2019t have find on your system, you can install it using DNF:<\/p>\n
$ sudo dnf install findutils<\/p>\n
Running find without any options or parameters recursively lists all files and directories in the current directory.<\/p>\n
$ find
\n.
\n.\/Documents
\n.\/Documents\/secret
\n.\/Documents\/secret\/christmas-presents.txt
\n.\/Documents\/notes.txt
\n.\/Documents\/work
\n.\/Documents\/work\/status-reports.txt
\n.\/Documents\/work\/project-abc
\n.\/Documents\/work\/project-abc\/README.md
\n.\/Documents\/work\/project-abc\/do-things.sh
\n.\/Documents\/work\/project-abc\/project-notes.txt
\n.\/.bash_logout
\n.\/.bashrc
\n.\/Videos
\n.\/.bash_profile
\n.\/.vimrc
\n.\/Pictures
\n.\/Pictures\/trees.png
\n.\/Pictures\/wallpaper.png
\n.\/notes.txt
\n.\/Music<\/p>\n
But the true power of find is that you can search by name:<\/p>\n
$ find -name do-things.sh
\n.\/Documents\/work\/project-abc\/do-things.sh<\/p>\n
Or just a part of a name \u2014 like the file extension. Let\u2019s find all .txt files:<\/p>\n
$ find -name “*.txt”
\n.\/Documents\/secret\/christmas-presents.txt
\n.\/Documents\/notes.txt
\n.\/Documents\/work\/status-reports.txt
\n.\/Documents\/work\/project-abc\/project-notes.txt
\n.\/notes.txt<\/p>\n
You can also look for files by size. That might be especially useful if you\u2019re running out of space. Let\u2019s list all files larger than 1 MB:<\/p>\n
$ find -size +1M
\n.\/Pictures\/trees.png
\n.\/Pictures\/wallpaper.png<\/p>\n
Searching a specific directory is also possible. Let\u2019s say I want to find a file in my Documents directory, and I know it has the word \u201cproject\u201d in its name:<\/p>\n
$ find Documents -name “*project*”
\nDocuments\/work\/project-abc
\nDocuments\/work\/project-abc\/project-notes.txt<\/p>\n
Ah! That also showed the directory. One thing I can do is to limit the search query to files only:<\/p>\n
$ find Documents -name “*project*” -type f
\nDocuments\/work\/project-abc\/project-notes.txt<\/p>\n
And again, find have many more options you can use, the man page might definitely help you:<\/p>\n
$ man find<\/p>\n