In Unix-like and some other operating systems, find is a command-line utility that searches through one or more directory trees of a file system, locates files based on some user-specified criteria and applies a user-specified action on each matched file. The possible search criteria include a pattern to match against the file name or a time range to match against the modification time or access time of the file. By default, find returns a list of all files below the current working directory.
The related locate programs use a database of indexed files obtained through find (updated at regular intervals, typically by cron job) to provide a faster method of searching the entire filesystem for files by name.
Read more about Find: Find Syntax, POSIX Protection From Infinite Output
Famous quotes containing the word find:
“Is it not ironic, oh my husband? Your wife an adulteress. Your mother an adulteress. Your uncle an adulterer. Your friend an adulterer. Do you not find that amusing, dear Nicholas?”
—Richard Matheson (b. 1926)
“Knowledge has two extremes. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great minds, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same natural ignorance from which they set out; this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“So universal and widely related is any transcendent moral greatness, and so nearly identical with greatness everywhere and in every age,—as a pyramid contracts the nearer you approach its apex,—that, when I look over my commonplace-book of poetry, I find that the best of it is oftenest applicable, in part or wholly, to the case of Captain Brown.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)