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:
“In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name.
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“I often sit back and think, “I wish I’d done that,” and find out later that I already have.”
—Richard Harris (b. 1932)
“It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)