Find, Locate, and Grep
====================================================================================
FIND
Find is a linux search tool that can be used to find a variety of files based on the given criteria.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Basic find
find targetdirectory -name stringtofind
find / -name hello.txt
wildcards
find / -name "*.txt"
Discard errors (ie permission denied)
find / -name "*.txt" 2>/dev/null
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find files with specific permissions
Find files with read,write, and execute permissions
find / -perm +rwx
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find files by size
Find files that are greater than 2MB:
find / -size +2M
Find files that are less than 2MB:
find / -size -2M
Find files that are exactly 2MB:
find / -size 2M
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find files by owner/group
Find files based on group
find / -group groupname
Find files based on owner
find / -user username
====================================================================================
LOCATE
Locate is similar to find in its functionality, however, there are some important distinctions:
- Locate keeps it's own database of files on a system
- Locate is less disk IO intensive since it doesn't have to scan the whole hard drive for files, instead it references it's own database.
- Locate isn't installed by default on most systems, the package name is mlocate. Once installed, you'll need to run the updated command to update locate's database - this should really be updated every time you use the command
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Locate file based on name
locate test.txt
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------