Locate files on linux, FreeBSD and UNIX system

by on January 31, 2007 · 1 comment· last updated at January 31, 2007

Q. How do I locate files on Debian Linux?

A. You can use find and locate command.

find command search a file system in real time. So depending on the size of your file system (partition) and the depth of your search, the find command can sometime take a long time to scan all of the data.
To search your entire filesystem for the files called resume.doc type
$ find / -name resume.doc

locate command list or display files in databases that match a given filenames. This is not a real time reporting. The data reported in the output of locate isn't as fresh as the data reported by find. However it is the fastest way to find a file.
$ locate resume.doc

More Find command examples

Please see following previous examples for more information:



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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1 Linda Black November 28, 2012 at 5:03 pm

How do I find a missing file names +8extpfx.ciii?

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