Finding files and file listing

The find command is one of the great utilities in the Unix/Linux command-line toolbox. It is useful both at the command line and in shell scripts. Like cat and ls, find has many features, and most people do not use it to its fullest. This recipe deals with some common ways to utilize find to locate files.

Getting ready

The find command uses the following strategy:  find descends through a hierarchy of files, matches files that meet the specified criteria, and performs some actions. The default action is to print the names of files and folders, which can be specified with the -print option.

How to do it...

To list all the files and folders descending from a given directory, use this syntax:

$ find base_path

The base_path can be any location from which find should start descending (for example, /home/slynux/).

Here's an example of this command:

$ find . -print
.history
Downloads
Downloads/tcl.fossil
Downloads/chapter2.doc
…

The . specifies the current directory and ....