What is the difference between "find" and "locate" search methods in Catfish?

Question

There seem to be two different methods of searching for files in Catfish

What is the difference?

Solution

locate is fast but bases its results on a local database that needs to be updated for it to find a recent result. Command updatedb is usually run daily by cron to update the default database.

find is real time so does not depend on a local database. Being real time it is also slower than locate.

Catfish uses the actual Linux commands so you can find more information on both commands with man locate, man locatedb and man find if the 2 links do not give enough information.