Bash Find

Last updated: 2020-05-01

Bash Find Command

find path_to_search . type -f -name "*text_to_find*"
# find and copy
find path_to_search . type -f -name "*text_to_find*" -exec cp "{}" destination_path \;

Use -maxdepth to only return the current directory, not recursivly search inside subfolders.

Use -type f to only return files and not directories or device nodes or whatever else.

Use a combination if -not and -name to avoid the files with names you don't want.

It might come together like this:

find /path/to/uploads -maxdepth 1 -type f -not -name 't_*'

Simple Recursive Find

find . -name "*.jpg"

Recursive Find - Count File Types

find . -type f | sed 's/.*\.//' | sort | uniq -c
   16 avi
   29 jpg
  136 mp3
    3 mp4

Command explanation:

• find recursively prints all filenames
• sed deletes from every filename the prefix until the file extension
• uniq assumes sorted input
• -c does the counting (like a histogram).

Reference: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/18506/recursive-statistics-on-file-types-in-directory