How to use find quietly?
I want to search for all occurences of <searchterm> on my machine. Now when I perform a search like this
find / <searchterm>I can see all the paths the search is running through. How can I limit the results to my searchterm?
Abstract example
I have a folder, let's call it my-own-folder. Now when I want to know if there are any other folders with the same name and run a search for
find / my-own-folderthe output shows a couple of hundred lines like this
/var/www/my-own-folder/index.php
/var/www/my-own-folder/lib/1.php
/var/www/my-own-folder/templates/2.php
/var/www/my-own-folder/log/3.logfollowed by another thousands of lines (~380k lines) that contain /usr, /lib, /proc, /var and so on, examples:
/etc/gshadow
/etc/fonts
/dev/ram7
/media/user
/run/udev/watch
/bin/gzexe
/vmlinuz
/lost+foundAnd the lines don't contain my-own-folder. I highly doubt, that they're all connected to that folder. So why are they outputted?
Precise example
I want to apply a patch for openldap but don't know where I can find the folder in order to run the patch. So when I search
find / openldap
find / slapdit seems to output all locations where the search is performed, and not only the occurences of openldap or slapd.
Update
My fault was not to use -name in my search like this
find / -name "<searchterm>"4 Answers
You can use redirection:
find / <searchterm> 2>/dev/nullThis redirect all errors to the null device /dev/null.
for example:
# find / -name StewieGriffin\*
/root: Permission denied
/home/peterg: Permission denied
/home/stewie/StewieGriffin-resume.docWould be converted to
# find / -name StewieGriffin\* 2>/dev/null
/home/stewie/StewieGriffin-resume.docPlease take a more look on this link.
4To limit the amount of output you can use either head or tail to read either first or last x number of terms. For example,
$ find . -iname "*test*" | head -n 10
find: `./.cache/dconf'./xterm-297/tektests
./xterm-297/tektests/imtesth.tek
./xterm-297/tektests/fotest.tek
./xterm-297/tektests/aitest.tek
./xterm-297/tektests/imtest.tek
./xterm-297/testxmc.c
./xterm-297/Tests
./xterm-297/vttests
./test.c
: Permission denied./file2.testYou can also use less to view the output conveniently with page-up / down buttons.
find / -type d -name "foldername" | less
You can also use ! -path to tell find to ignore some specific folder
find . ! -path /somedirectory/anotherdirectory -iname "searchterm"
of use grep -v termyoudontwant. -v flag allows to ignore stuff what you don't want to see in the output
find . -name "searchterm" | grep -v idontwantthatstuff `
Find allows specifying what type do you want to search for. If you want to search for folders, type is d. To search for all folders on the system named test, run this:
find / -type d -name "test"
Here's a concrete example to search for exact directory on my system:
$ sudo find / -type d -name "bin"
/home/xieerqi/bin
/usr/lib/initramfs-tools/bin
/usr/lib/klibc/bin
/usr/lib/pm-utils/bin
/usr/lib/2013.com.canonical.certification:checkbox/bin
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/qt4/bin
/usr/lib/ure/bin
/usr/lib/2013.com.canonical.certification:plainbox-resources/bin
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/plainbox/impl/providers/stubbox/bin
/usr/lib/guile-2.0/bin
/usr/share/qt4/bin
/usr/share/libreoffice/bin
/usr/src/linux-headers-3.16.0-30/tools/testing/selftests/rcutorture/bin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/binIf I want to ignore the /usr/ entries, I run this:
$ sudo find / -type d -name "bin" | grep -v '\/usr\/*'
/home/xieerqi/bin
/binTo ignore the directories /usr, /lib, /proc, /var , change grep like this
grep -v '\/usr\/*\|\/lib\/*\|\/proc\/*\|\/var\/*'
As you discovered, -name is the flag to use as it is built in to find. As a more general purpose solution which will cover you when other apps don't have a tool to rationalise search results (apt-get for example) you can use grep.
find / <searchterm> | grep <searchterm>Don't use a blankspace between / and my-own-folder. Set full path to the folder like this:
# find /var/www/my-own-folderThis will only output the content of my-own-folder.
