What is the difference between ' find . -name h* ' and ' find . -name ho* '?

[May_3]

Hi,

The result are different when I type in the command line as follows:
# find . -name h*
find: missing conjunction
# find . -name ho*
./hosts
./net/ticlts/hosts
./net/ticots/hosts
./net/ticotsord/hosts

Could anybody give me an explaination about the difference and why?
Thanks a lot!

Best Regards.,
May

[Deepak Extross]

May,
find . -name "h*"
should work.

[Deepak Extross · Accepted solution]

If you're curious about why you got the "missing conjunction" error, try this:

set -x
find . -name h*
set +x

You'll probably find that the shell expanded the h* to one or more matching files in the current directory, hence this error.
If you had one or more files starting with "ho" in the current directory, 'find . -name ho*' would also have given the same error.

Another solution to your problem would be:
set -f
find . -name h*
set +f

'set -f' instructs the shell to turn off file globbing

[Tore_1]

Hi, if you fail to quote h*, the shell will try to expand it before giving it to the program find.

In my /tmp catalog, this meant find . -name h* was expanded to find . -name hei hei.txt heidu help.sh hh home.chk hpufl1

This makes no sense to the program find. If you quote ("h*") the argument is unexpanded and correctly interprated by find.

[Trond Haugen]

Your problem is WHEN the expression is expanded. If what you want to fo is find files starting with h or ho you shhould write:
find . -name h\*
find . -name ho\*

The expression will them be expanded "as find finds files". As opposed to hatched with files in current dir before starting the find.

Regards,
Trond

[hpuxrox]

I "ALWAYS" put qoutes around my search field when im using wildcards like *.

find . -name "h*"

and

find . -name "ho*"