how do you search for a file?

[bob the spod]

if I have lost a file (which I have) and have not got a clue which directory it is in what command can I use?
for example's sake lets say the file is called cheesychips

also if I did know which directory whats the correct command then?

cheers for any help
bob

[Steven E. Protter]

find / -name cheesychips

If you have an idea what filesystem its on, say opt, you can go.

find /opt -name cheesychips

SEP

[Hari Kumar]

find . -name cheesychips (or)

find / -name cheesychips

[Sergejs Svitnevs]

# /usr/bin/find / -name cheesychips

Regards,
Sergejs

[Mark Grant]

"find / -name cheesychips -print" if you have no idea where is is or replace the "/" with a directory to start searching for.

You can replace cheesychips with "*chips" or "ch*s*ch*" to get all files that match that pattern.

Now if using a pattern instead of a whole file name I surround it with quotes (as above) but some people don't. I do because I have no idea how the shell can possibly not expand that before running the command and therefore don't believe it really does work if you don't put quotes around it (evidence to the contrary)

[Patrick Wallek]

If you want to search the entire system:

# find / -name cheesychips -type f

The above will look through the entire system for a file (-type f) of name cheesychips.

# find /dir -name cheesychips -type f

The above will look through the specified dir for the file named cheesychips.

There are numerous options to find. Do a 'man find' for more info.

[Bruno Ganino]

Try
find / -name cheesychips -type f -print
or
cd /
find . -name cheesychips -print

Bruno

[GK_5]

find / -name cheesychips -print
Will search the entire dir structure for this file

-GK-

[doug mielke]

the only thing to add is a friendly grep afterwards, if not certain of the file name.

more system load, but easier syntax than find.


find / -print | grep heesy

[Bill Hassell]

Be VERY careful in using find / on a big server. Unless you were the root user, there should very few places you can create a file. The reason is that you don't have permission to store anything in /etc or /sbin or /opt, etc, so no need to look there. But what is worse is that find / will look at every file in a mounted CDROM, every file in NFS directories and through thousands (millions?) of files that are part of web pages or database files or unrelated applications. And since find will be running full speed, during the search time EVERYONE on the system can be affected by the massive number of directory accesses that will be taking place. Start with reasonable locations and use your shell history ($HOME/.sh_history) to see where you've been as far as directory changes Hint:

fc -l 1 | grep cd
fc -l 1 | grep lostfilename

BTW: if you don't have a hitory file, turn this on immediately to avoid similar situations. In /etc/profile, add these two lines:

export HISTFILE=$HOME/.sh_history
export HISTSIZE=500

[Bruno Ganino]

Bob, I add....
The option "-user" bound the command "find" can be used ... example: I want to find all the file-names that they begin with "chee" and that they belong to the user "bruno".

find / -name chee* -user bruno -print

Bruno