Q. How do I locate files on Debian Linux?
A. You can use find and locate command.
find command search a file system in real time. So depending on the size of your file system (partition) and the depth of your search, the find command can sometime take a long time to scan all of the data.
To search your entire filesystem for the files called resume.doc type
$ find / -name resume.doc
locate command list or display files in databases that match a given filenames. This is not a real time reporting. The data reported in the output of locate isn’t as fresh as the data reported by find. However it is the fastest way to find a file.
$ locate resume.doc
More Find command examples
Please see following previous examples for more information:
- Linux: Finding/locating files with find command part # 1
- Linux: Finding/locating files with find command part # 2
- Finding all .mp3 files and move to new directory from shell prompt
- Linux or Unix find and remove files with one find command on fly
- How do I find the largest files/directories on a Linux/UNIX/BSD filesystem?
- Find files by access, modification date under Linux or UNIX
