Difference between revisions 507822 and 507823 on knwiki

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{{lowercase|title=find}} 
The <code>'''find'''</code> program is a [[directory (file systems)|directory]] [[search utility]] on [[Unix-like]] platforms. It searches through one or more directory [[tree (computing)|trees]] of a [[filesystem]], locating [[Computer file|file]]s based on some user-specified criteria. By default, <code>find</code> returns all files below the current [[working directory]]. Further, <code>find</code> allows the user to specify an action to be taken on each matched file. Thus, it is an extremely powerful program for applying actions to many files. It also supports [[Regular expression|regex]] matching.

The <code>find</code> program is no longer preferred for searching for files by name in the entire filesystem. Instead, the <code>[[GNU_locate|locate]]</code> programs, which use a database of indexed files, is more efficient at that.

== Find syntax ==
1 white space is needed to divide syntax element when writing a find command. Otherwise, some usage errors will come up.

==Examples==

===From current directory===
 find . -name 'my*'
This searches in the current directory (represented by a period) and below it, for files and directories with names starting with ''my''. The quotes avoid the [[shell (computing)|shell]] expansion - without them the shell would replace ''my*'' with the list of files whose names begin with ''my'' in the current directory. In newer versions of the program, the directory may be o(contracted; show full)
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