find usage

[Matt Graham]

On 2022-06-27 14:30, Brian Cluff via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> On 6/27/22 11:32, Michael via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>> So I'm opening the directory I'm searching in a terminal and type:
>> find Marriage .
>> but it just gives me a listing of what is below '.' (I guess).
>> What am I doing wrong?

>  find . -name Marriage
>  or
>  find . | grep Marriage
> 
>  The first one will only match fines that are exactly names
> "Marriage" while the second one will match any files with "Marriage"
> as part of the name.  Both versions in this case are care sensitive.

I basically always do "find . -name \*string\*" when I'm sure there's 
something in or under . that contains the case-sensitive string string.  
-iname is for when case doesn't matter.  Escaping the * prevents the 
shell from expanding the glob, as it would if you had any files 
containing string in . , and that would confuse you and do the wrong 
thing.

find, like many of the old tools, was not designed for casual users.  
If you have anacron or leave the computer on all the time, and the file 
you're looking for has been on the system for >= 24 hours, "locate -i 
\*string\*" will find all the files matching (case insensitive) string 
no matter where they are, and do so quite quickly.

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