Difference between revisions 507890 and 507891 on knwiki

{{otheruses}}
{{lowercase|title=find}} 
In [[Unix-like]] and some other [[operating system]]s, <code>'''find'''</code> is a [[command-line utility]] that [[Search engine (computing)|searches]] through one or more [[directory tree]]s of a [[file system]], locates [[Computer file|file]]s based on some [[user (computing)|user]]-specified criteria and applies a user-specified action on each matched file. The possible search criteria include a [[pattern matching|pattern](contracted; show full)

Note that the command itself should *not* be quoted; otherwise you get error messages like

 find: echo "mv ./3bfn rel071204": No such file or directory

which means that '''find''' is trying to run a file called 'echo "mv ./3bfn rel071204"' and failing.


If running under Windows, don't include the backslash before the semicolon:

 find . -exec grep blah {} ;⏎
⏎
If you will be executing over many results, it is more efficient to pipe the results to the [[xargs]] command instead.⏎
⏎
If running under Windows, don't include the backslash before the semicolon:

 find . -exec grep blah {} ;  xargs is a more modern implementation, and handles long lists in a more intelligent way.  The print0 option can be used with this.

The following command will ensure that filenames with whitespaces are passed to the executed COMMAND without being split up by the shell.  

 find . -print0 | xargs -0 COMMAND

The list of files generated by find (whilst it is being generated) is simultaneously [[Pipe_Unix|piped]] to xargs, which then executes COMMAND with the files as arguments.  See [[xargs]] for more examples and options.

===Search for a string===
This command will search for a string in all files from the /tmp directory and below:

 find /tmp -exec grep "search string" '{}' /dev/null \; -print

The <tt>[[/dev/null]]</tt> argument is used to show the name of the file before the text that is found. Without it, only the text found is printed.  An equivalent mechanism is to use the "-H" or "--with-filename" option to grep:
(contracted; show full)[[fr:Find]]
[[it:Find (Unix)]]
[[hu:Find]]
[[ja:Find]]
[[pl:Find]]
[[pt:Find]]
[[ru:Find]]
[[fi:Find (Unix)]]