GNU find is a powerful command-line utility that lets you search for files and folders in a hierarchical tree directory structure. It is the backend for all those utilities out there like the graphical searching in KDE or GNOME. However, find can be a little hard to handle at first by beginners.

«A few months ago, we finished the third of a series about features added to longstanding utility programs. This month we’ll look at the new features that GNU programmers and others have added to all of the other features that find(1) already had. (You can “find” an introduction to find in here: A Very Valuable Find.»

There is always a time when working with the CLI that you will want to find a set of files by name, such as all JPEG images. The `find` command lets you do this and more. Let’s jump into the basic structure of a find command:

The find command can use multiple expressions to enable complex searches which permit multiple criterion in the search. This feature greatly enhances the ability for creating precise searches.

The find command can be used to execute a command based on the data that is located with the initial find command. This provides a powerful alternative for manipulating the data you retrieve.

Continuing reviewing some of my old posts, I found this one Examples of find command, now I want to show you a faster and easier way to find files.

A video howto for using the command line to find files with the "find" command.

Many Linux users use the ‘find’ utility when searching for files using the command line on their system. There are times though where I’m just looking for something and I don’t want to have to wait for the command to scan the entire directory tree in order to track it down. That’s where locate comes in with quick and simple results.

The Find command in Firefox locates the user-specified text in the body of a Web page. The command is an easy-to-use tool that works well enough for most users most of the time. Sometimes, however, a more powerful Find-like tool would make locating text easier.