Search the Current Filesystem with find

You remember saving an attendance list somewhere under the school's folder, but not which class subfolder contains it. Instead of opening folders one at a time, you can ask find to walk that part of the filesystem and select matching entries. You choose both the starting point and the conditions.

Let's search for regular text files. The distinction between what the shell does and what find does is important: we want find to receive the wildcard pattern and test it against names it discovers, rather than have the shell expand it before the search starts.

Prepare the example

Use a new practice folder. The first two lines create a school directory and two empty files with different suffixes. That gives the search one match and one non-match to explain, without relying on files elsewhere on your machine.

Bash · Linux terminal

mkdir school
touch school/attendance.txt school/marks.csv
find school -type f -name '*.txt'

Expected result

school/attendance.txt

In find school -type f -name '*.txt', school is the starting directory. -type f selects regular files, and -name compares the entry's name with the supplied pattern. The single quotes keep the shell from expanding *.txt in the current directory first.

The output names school/attendance.txt; the CSV file does not match the suffix. Each result includes its path from the chosen starting point, which helps you locate it. If a search is too broad, narrow the starting directory or conditions before adding actions. Searching is a useful first step before any batch change or deletion.

The find command searches the live filesystem starting from a directory you choose. You can narrow results by filename, item type, size, modification time and many other conditions.

Basic Syntax of find

The basic syntax of the find command looks like this:

find [starting_directory] [conditions]

By default, if you don’t provide a starting directory, it uses the current directory (.) as the root for the search.

Example 1: Find files by name

find . -name "file.txt"

./docs/file.txt
./backup/file.txt

This command will search for any file named file.txt starting from the current directory. It will return the path to each matching file.

Tip: Case-Insensitive Search

find . -iname "file.txt"

Using -iname instead of -name makes the search case-insensitive.

Example 2: Find only directories

find . -type d -name "config"

This will search for directories (not files!) named config.

Example 3: Find only files

find . -type f -name "*.log"

Here, we’re looking for files ending in .log. The -type f ensures we only get files, not directories.

Example 4: Find files by size

find /var/log -type f -size +10M

This finds files larger than 10 megabytes in the /var/log directory. You can also use:

• -size -10M for less than 10 MB
• -size 10M for exactly 10 MB

Example 5: Find files modified recently

find . -type f -mtime -1

This finds files modified in the last 1 day. You can change the number to any number of days.

Example 6: Delete found files (Be Careful!)

find . -name "*.tmp" -type f -delete

This will delete all .tmp files it finds. Make sure to double-check your path and condition before using -delete!

Example 7: Execute a command on each result

find . -name "*.sh" -exec chmod +x {} \;

This finds all shell scripts and makes them executable using chmod +x. The {} is replaced with each file path, and \; ends the command.

Use find patterns to locate files precisely

• -name to match file names
• -type f for files and -type d for directories
• -size for size filters
• -mtime for modification time
• -exec and -delete for actions

And that’s it! You’ve just learned how to find files confidently using the find command in Linux.

Practice these on your system and try customizing the options. You’ll get comfortable in no time!

Your task: Match text files beneath school without shell glob expansion.

Use a new practice folder. The first two lines create a school directory and two empty files with different suffixes. That gives the search one match and one non-match to explain, without relying on files elsewhere on your machine.

Bash · complete example for this question

mkdir school
touch school/attendance.txt school/marks.csv
find school -type f -name '*.txt'

Expected result

school/attendance.txt

Worked answer

find school -type f -name '*.txt'

Quote *.txt so the pattern reaches find intact. Without quotes, any matches in the invoking shell's current directory can change the arguments before find begins. Also retain -type f when the task asks for files rather than directories with a matching suffix.

Read a find command as starting point plus tests. Keep patterns intended for the tool quoted, inspect the returned paths, and distinguish a search from an action applied to its results. A narrow, checked search is much easier to trust than an unexplained scan of everything.