Find (Find File and Directory)

The find command is used to locate files or directories under the specified path.

Find with File or Directory Name

Using a file or directory name is one of the frequently used approaches in the find command. Specify the file or directory name after the -name option.

For example, to find the ssh key file named authorized_keys, you can run the command below.

find ~ -name authorized_keys

The command returns the file path of the file like the one below.

/home/ubuntu/.ssh/authorized_keys

Find with Other Options

There are many other approaches to finding files or directories. Here are the selected options for the find command.

-type option

You can specify what type of files or directories you are searching. To use the option, add the document type after the -type option. These are examples of the document type.

• f: normal file
• d: directory
• l: symbolic link
• s: hard link

For example, to find a symbolic link whose name starts with “file” run the command below.

find file* -type l

-size option

You can also search files with the document data size. Specify the size that you are looking for.

• -size +10M: size is 10M or more than 10M
• -size 10M: size is 10M
• -size -10M: size is 10M or less than 10M

-empty option

With this option, you can find empty documents only.

-o option

When you have two search criteria, you can connect the search name with the -o option. It works as the OR function.

If you want to find two different file names, you need to add the -name option both before and after the -o option. The following is an example of the command used to search documents named test or test_sub.

find ~ -name test -o -name test_sub

Wildcard

Wildcard is useful when you forget the exact name of a file or directory. Please see the next section on how to use the wildcard in the find command.