Find a File or Directory

Overview

Using the find command to locate files and directories from the command line.

# Find the directory named 'dirname'
find ./ -name 'dirname' -type d
# Find the file name 'filename'
find ./ -name 'filename' -type f
# Recursively find files and directories matching 'grepexpr*'
find ./ -name 'grepexpr*'

Examples

File structure used in examples:

example/
        frugle/
              fruit_on_sale.txt
              sweater_sale.txt
        fruit/
              fruit.txt

        fruit_intro.txt

Find all files and directories in 'example' which begin with 'fru':

find example/ -name 'fru*'
example/fruit_intro.txt
example/fruit
example/fruit/fruit.txt
example/frugle
example/frugle/fruit_on_sale.txt

Find only directories beginning with 'fru':

find example/ -name 'fru*' -type d
example/fruit
example/frugle

Now we find only files beginning with 'fru':

find example/ -name 'fru*' -type f
example/fruit_intro.txt
example/fruit/fruit.txt
example/frugle/fruit_on_sale.txt