Search for files and print their full path

Question

ls -R /media/X | grep filename lets me search for file names, but it only prints the file name and not the directory it resides in. How can I print the file name and its directory?

Solution 1

You can use the command find for these purposes.

Try

find /media/X | grep filename

You can achieve the same results without grep (as @geekosaur points out), but find's syntax can be hassle if you're already used to grep.

Solution 2

ls and grep aren't really the right tools for that; you want the find command.

find /media/X -name '*filename*'

This also lets you look for other conditions such as by age.

Comments

[wisdom]

it's preferred with grep as names are highlighted ^_^

[Eroen]

I just want to add that the amount of time it takes to traverse a directory tree in this way depends heavily on the underlying filesystem.

[wisdom]

Thanks alot for your great answer as it's fastest !...but how about locating under /media/ path ? how do I do that ? seems I can't !

[CodeGnome]

@wisdom mlocate will prune /media by default. If you want to index removable media, you can edit PRUNEPATHS in /etc/updatedb.conf to suit yourself. If you remove the entry for /media, it will be included in the index the next time updatedb is run. Also note that your locate results may be out of date, since the index is only as current as the last invocation of updatedb, which is why /media is excluded by default.

[Daniel Andersson]

@wisdom: Still, find /media/X -name '*filename*' | grep filename would be quicker (how much depends on how many files there are) and highlight the output. And you will get the warm fuzzy feeling of using the right tools for the job :-) .