Difference between revisions 507849 and 507850 on knwiki

{{otheruses}}
{{lowercase|title=find}} 
The <code>'''find'''</code> program is a [[directory (file systems)|directory]] [[Search_engine_(computing)|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 (obtained through <code>find</code>), are more efficient.

== Find syntax ==
{{expand-section|date=August 2008}}
A single white space is needed to divide syntax elements when writing a find command. Otherwise, some usage error will come up...

⏎
also means to look for⏎
⏎
==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)[[fr:Find]]
[[it:Find (Unix)]]
[[hu:Find]]
[[ja:Find]]
[[pl:Find]]
[[pt:Find]]
[[ru:Find]]
[[fi:Find (Unix)]]