Find a File by Name in UNIX, Solaris, or Linux
Posted by Quinn McHenry in UNIX
Using the find command, one can locate a file by name.
To find a file such as filename.txt anywhere on the system:
find / -name filename.txt -print
Recent operating system versions do not require the print option because this is the default. To limit the search to a specific directory such as /usr:
find /usr -name filename.txt -print
About Quinn McHenry
Quinn was one of the original co-founders of Tech-Recipes. He is currently crafting iOS applications as a senior developer at Small Planet Digital in Brooklyn, New York.
View more articles by Quinn McHenry
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The Conversation
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October 22, 2008 at 7:22 pm, snarfel said:
so, i get a bunch of “Permission Denied” notices for directories that my current user account can’t access. is there a way to suppress these?
October 22, 2008 at 7:30 pm, Quinn McHenry said:
Yeah, totally. Normal output goes to “standard output” which can be redirected with normal measures. It’s actually a nice thing that those messages are sent to “standard error” so you can redirect those but keep the more interesting responses.
find / -name something 2> /dev/null
November 17, 2008 at 2:17 pm, venkata sudheer said:
try this # find -name -print
January 08, 2009 at 5:09 am, Jesse F. said:
His problem is is that he doesn’t have permissions to view a lot of the files ‘find’ uses. Here’s a few options:
If you don’t have root permission, then you can supress error messages like so: ‘find -ignore_readdir_race /parent/path/here -name file_name.txt’
Or if you can get permission, then: ‘sudo find /parent/path/here -name file_name.txt’
yay!
June 29, 2010 at 3:31 pm, Goldcd said:
Try
find / -name filename.txt -print 2>/dev/null
June 22, 2010 at 9:03 am, Srikantakumar said:
when I am excuting the below command, getting the file name with ./ prefix before file name which i don’t want (like test2 only not ./test2). any suggestion….
$ find -name “test*” -type f -print
./test2
./test3
./test1
November 12, 2010 at 9:27 am, Rani Sahoo said:
I can use locate filename to get the file with path.
April 06, 2012 at 6:49 am, bill doherty said:
how would I structure the command to only return the names of directories that do NOT contain a specific file…i.e. find directories that do not contain a file called “running.txt”? I currently use find . -name “running.txt” but can’t figure out how to say “opposite” of that? thank you
April 07, 2012 at 7:11 am, qmchenry said:
Bill, you can do logical operations in find that can make some incredibly elaborate and precise scalpel cuts. To do what you’re asking, just add \! in front of your -name argument, so
find . \! -name running.txt