Skip to Content
bash Cookbook
book

bash Cookbook

by Carl Albing, JP Vossen, Cameron Newham
May 2007
Beginner
628 pages
15h 46m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from bash Cookbook

Finding Existing Files and Content Fast

Problem

You’d like to be able to find files without having to wait for a long find command to complete, or you need to find a file with some specific content.

Solution

If your system has locate, slocate, Beagle, Spotlight or some other indexer, you are already set. If not, look into them.

As we discussed in Finding and Running Commands, locate and slocate consult database files about the system (usually compiled and updated by a cron job) to find file or command names almost instantly. The location of the actual database files, what is indexed therein, and how often, may vary from system to system. Consult your system’s manpages for details.

$ locate apropos
/usr/bin/apropos
/usr/share/man/de/man1/apropos.1.gz
/usr/share/man/es/man1/apropos.1.gz
/usr/share/man/it/man1/apropos.1.gz
/usr/share/man/ja/man1/apropos.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/apropos.1.gz

locate and slocate don’t index content though, so see Finding Files by Content for that.

Beagle and Spotlight are examples of a fairly recent technology known as desktop search engines or indexers. Google Desktop Search and Copernic Desktop Search are two examples from the Microsoft Windows world. Desktop search tools use some kind of indexer to crawl, parse, and index the names and contents of all of the files (and usually email messages) in your personal file space; i.e., your home directory on a Unix or Linux system. This information is then almost instantly available to you when you look for it. These ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition

bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Carl Albing, JP Vossen
Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Clif Flynt, Sarath Lakshman, Shantanu Tushar

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596526784Errata Page