On Sun, 28 Apr 2002, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
> Format: FINDIT [drive:]filename[.[ext]] [/Q]
>
> Does anyone here know where I can get a somewhat equivalent program
> for Linux?
In full distributions, you can use 'locate'.
$ locate *54.JPG
/home/steve/pics/DCP00354.JPG
/home/steve/pics/DCP00454.JPG
/home/steve/.arachne/cache/1018834254.JPG
/home/steve/.arachne/cache/1019354854.JPG
/home/httpd/html/apache_rez/0004/DCP00154.JPG
/home/httpd/html/apache_rez/0003/DCP00054.JPG
/home/stackman/DCP00354.JPG
This is *FAST* because it checks a database of all the
files on your machine. Normally the database is updated
once a day with a cron job calling 'updatedb'. Again, this
pertains to full distributions.
If you're using BasicLinux, I kinda doubt you have that,
but you probably still have 'find' which actually searches
through the whole drive for the info requested.
In order to do the same thing using 'find' you'd use this
syntax:
$ find <starting directory> -name <filename or pattern>
example:
$ find /home -name *54.JPG
It's very time consuming on multi-GB drives... It's also
more powerful than either 'locate' or FINDIT.COM because
'find' can also find files based on their write dates, last
access dates, and sizes. Say you just wrote a file, but you
forgot what you called it. ;-) 'find' can use this syntax:
$ find <starting directory> -ctime <days old>
example:
(note the file extensions... hadda get that in too. ;-)
$ find ~/twoloons -ctime 1
/home/steve/twoloons
/home/steve/twoloons/Java_Kayumas_labels.wpd
/home/steve/twoloons/invoice.wpd
/home/steve/twoloons/Priority_address_label.wpd
/home/steve/twoloons/label.ps
/home/steve/twoloons/Panama_labels.wpd
Then by size...
$ find <starting directory> -size<k>
example:
$ find ~/ -size 1000k
This command will find all files that are 1000k in size.
In order to find files which are larger than 1000k, you
simply prepend a + sign to the size, so:
$ find ~/ -size +1000k
Oh, man! That's a lot of files. I wonder how many there
are?
$ find ~/ -size +1000k | wc -l
95
(The | works as in DOS. It uses the output from one command
as input for the next. 'wc' is the "word count" command,
-l means to count lines)
And what if you want to see the full directory info
instead of just the filename. Combine commands in a
different way to do that. :-)
example:
(show full directory listing on all files larger than 9000k)
$ ls -l $(find ~/ -size +9000k)
This is a simple nesting of commands, where the command
inside parenthesis is executed first and the result held in
memory (actually as an unamed variable). The contents of
the variable are then acted on by the command outside the
parenthesis.
Anyway... that's a nice beginning on the ways you can
make use of the 'find' command. :-)
--
Steve Ackman
http://twoloonscoffee.com (Need green beans?)
http://twovoyagers.com (glass, linux & other stuff)
