File search in Linux?

[Edward78]

How do I do it?

[pythonmegapixel]

In the command line, change to the directory you want to search in, then

find -name pattern

 

where pattern is what to search for in the filename.

 

(There are other things you can search by and for instead: see https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/html_mono/find.html)

 

Or alternatively, you can do it in almost every GUI file manager - usually by looking for a magnifying glass icon.

[LloydLynx]

There's a dedicated graphical program called Catfish just for file searching. 

[wasab]

i mostly just used locate combined with grep

[Giganthrax]

As noted already, Catfish does this job really well.

 

Also, some file explorer programs have in-built searches that are really good. For instance, the one that comes with ZorinOS has a search bar on top that works really well.

[Dat Guy]

locate would be my choice, as it keeps a database of your files and does not need to dig through your hard disk every time you want to use it.

[CodeAsm]

• Dolphin (a graphical file browser) has a search option. it should be at the top near "Show Previews" and "Split"
  It then opens a searchbar and allows you to select to search for files or inside actual content, where to look
  from here, where you are, "your files" probably all in your home dir or even use search tools you got installed like Kfind, FSearch or Catfish.
• Thunar, another graphical file browser has the search option in the lower right and when you start typing, it searches in the folder your in.
  I guess this is what most filebrowsers allow, just start typing.
   

[10leej]

most gui file manager have it build in (usually just start typing and it starts searching)

[yurimodin83]

find ./ | grep "nameoffile"

[pythonmegapixel]

16 minutes ago, yurimodin83 said:

find ./ | grep "nameoffile"

What is the point of piping find to grep when find can do the searching by itself?

[wasab]

More familar with grep than anything else. This is like people piping to some perl or python cli script for regex parsing sometimes. 

[yurimodin83]

On 4/13/2022 at 3:14 PM, pythonmegapixel said:

What is the point of piping find to grep when find can do the searching by itself?

because you can do even more cool stuff if you are not 100% sure of the whole file name

$find ./ | grep -i "jpg" | grep -i "narrower" | grep -i "even_narrower"

 

this lets you search for partial filenames or bits and pieces if you don't remember.