Searching

Finding files

The find command searches for files in a directory hierarchy:

• Find files by name: find /path/to/search -name "filename"
• Find files by type: find /path/to/search -type f

For example, to find all .txt files in the current directory and subdirectories:

find . -name "*.txt"

Find has multiple options that can be very useful to find files with known characteristics other than name, for instance

• -size searches by file size

  find /path -size +10M  # Files larger than 10MB
  find /path -size -1k   # Files smaller than 1KB

• -mtime searches by modification time

  find /path -mtime -7  # Files modified in the last 7 days

Locate command

There’s a special tool that allows us to find the path of a command. which finds the location of a command’s executable

which python

Searching inside files

The command grep (Global Regular Expression Print) allows us to search for patterns inside files:

grep "search_term" */*.py

Exercise

Search in the sandpit folder for any files that contain TP53.