find

Find files and folders by name, type and more

What it does

find walks a folder with all its subfolders and prints the paths that match your conditions. The first argument says where to look (. is the current folder), the conditions follow.

-name matches by name, patterns included: -name "*.log". Quote the pattern, or the shell expands * before find ever sees it. -type f keeps only files, -type d only folders.

Syntax

find <folder> -name "<pattern>"
find <folder> -type d -name <name>

Examples

• Find every .log file in the current folder and below

  find . -name "*.log"

  same as: find . -name '*.log'

  • find — search for files
  • . — start from the current folder
  • -name "*.log" — by name; quotes keep the shell from expanding *

• Find every node_modules folder in the project

  find . -type d -name node_modules

  same as: find . -name node_modules -type d

  • -type d — folders only
  • -name node_modules — with this name

Related commands

• grep — Find the lines with some text in files
• ls — List files and folders
• which — Find out where a program lives

Practise · All commands