Finding files based on name

Problem

You want to find files or folders in a directory by name.

Solution

Use find to find files or folders in a folder by name.

Find all files or folder in the current directory whose name is password.txt.

    # This command would match any files whose name consisted of the letters `password.txt', regardless of case, including 'password.txt', 'PASSWORD.TXT', and 'password.TXT'.
    find . -iname password.txt

We can use some wildcard patterns to make the searching easier in case we don't know the exact names, or we just want to find all files with similar patterns.

    # search all files begin with `pass`
    find . -iname 'pass*'

    # file all files with a certain extension
    find . -iname '*.png'
    find . -iname '*.txt'

    # search all files whose name contains `pass` somewhere
    find . -iname '*pass*'

To find only file or folder we have to specify the type like so

    # search only files
    find . -type f -iname 'win*'

    # search only folder
    find . -type d -iname 'win*'

To exclude specific folders we use the -not -iname option

    find -name "*.js" -not -iname "hello.js"

To exclude specific folders we use the -not -path option

    find -name "*.js" -not -path "./directory/*"

Running commands on the files you find.

    find . -name '*.md' -exec echo 'Found {}' ';'
    > Found ./android_cli.md
    > Found ./awk.md
    > Found ./bash.md
    > Found ./curl.md
    > Found ./daemons.md
    > Found ./docker.md
    > ...

This is similar to "Running a command for each item in a list" part. You can use awk or xargs to do more advanced things. For simple operations you can use find.