113 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
113 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
---
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categories:
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- Programming Languages
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tags:
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- shell
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---
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# `find`
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`find` can be used both to locate files and run operations on the files it finds.
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## Main syntax
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### No options
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Without options specified, `find` alone will return a recursive index of all the files in the directory from which it is run.
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### Sub-directory
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If we pass a directory to `find` it will repeat the above process but specifically for that directory.
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```bash
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$ find i3
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i3
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i3/config
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```
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### Filters
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We can specify flags as filters (known as 'tests' within the program).
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#### Type
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Filter by type: file or directory
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```
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$ find -type d # return dirs only
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$ find -type f # return files only
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```
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Within a specified directory:
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```bash
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$ find i3 -type f
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```
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#### Filename
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This is the most frequent use case: filter files by name with globbing.
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```bash
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$ find -name "config"
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./.git/config
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./i3/config
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```
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```bash
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$ find -name "*.js"
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```
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The same, but case insensitive: `iname`
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```bash
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$ find -iname "*.JS"
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```
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#### Path
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As above but this time includes directory names in the match. `ipath` is the case-insensitive version.
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```bash
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$ find -path "utils*"
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utils.js
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utils/do-something.js
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```
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### Operators
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We can combine `find` commands by using logical operators: `-and`, `-or`, `-not`. For example:
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```bash
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$ find -not -name "*.js" -type f
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./app/index.html
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./app/style.css
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./dist/index.html
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./dist/style.c
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```
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Applied to a directory:
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```bash
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find . -type -f -not -path "./.git/"
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```
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## Run programs against results
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Using the `exec` keyword we can run a program against the files that are returned from `find`.
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In this syntax we use `{}` as a placeholder for the path of the file that is matched. We use `;` (escaped) to indicate the end of the operation.
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### Examples
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This script deletes the files that match the filter criteria:
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```bash
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$ find -name "*.js" -exec rm {} \;
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```
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This script finds all the files with the substring 'config' in their name and writes their file size to a file.
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```bash
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find -name '*config*' -exec wc -c {} \; > config-sizes
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```
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