find

Did you mean: find, Find, Findex Com Inc, Cumméne Find, Áed Find, Find (2001 Album by Birth), Ludvig (Frederik) Find (art), FIND (abbreviation), The Find, Find (command)

Dictionary: find (fīnd) pronunciation

v., found (found), find·ing, finds.

v.tr.

To come upon, often by accident; meet with.
To come upon or discover by searching or making an effort: found the leak in the pipe.
To discover or ascertain through observation, experience, or study: found a solution; find the product of two numbers; found that it didn't really matter.
1. To perceive to be, after experience or consideration: found the gadget surprisingly useful; found the book entertaining.
2. To experience or feel: found comfort in her smile.
To recover (something lost): found her keys.
To recover the use of; regain: found my voice and replied.
To succeed in reaching; arrive at: The dart found its mark.
To obtain or acquire by effort: found the money by economizing.
To decide on and make a declaration about: The jury deliberated and found a verdict of guilty. All the jurors found him guilty.
To furnish; supply.
1. To bring (oneself) to an awareness of what one truly wishes to be and do in life.
2. To perceive (oneself) to be in a specific place or condition: found herself at home that night; found himself drawn to the stranger.

v.intr.
To come to a legal decision or verdict: The jury found for the defendant.

n.

The act of finding.
Something that is found, especially an unexpectedly valuable discovery: The Rosetta stone was a providential archaeological find.

phrasal verb:

find out

To ascertain (something), as through examination or inquiry: I found out the phone number by looking it up. If you're not sure, find out.
To detect the true nature or character of; expose: Liars risk being found out.
To detect and apprehend; catch: Most embezzlers are found out in the end.

[Middle English finden, from Old English findan.]

findable find'a·ble adj.

Search unanswered questions...

Browse: Unanswered questions | Most-recent questions | Reference library

Thesaurus: find

Top

also find out

verb

To find or meet by chance: bump into, chance on (or upon), come across, come on (or upon), happen on (or upon), light on (or upon), run across, run into, stumble on (or upon), tumble on. Archaic alight on (or upon). Idioms: meet up with. See meet.
To look for and discover: locate, pinpoint, spot. See get/lose.
To obtain knowledge or awareness of something not known before, as through observation or study. ascertain, determine, discover, hear, learn. See teach/learn.

noun

See

Idioms: find

Top

Idioms beginning with find:
find fault
find it in one's heart
find one's way
find true north

See also hard way (find out the).

Antonyms: find

Top

Definition: discovery
Antonyms: loss

v

Definition: achieve, win
Antonyms: fail, fall short, forfeit, lose

v

Definition: catch sight of, lay hands on
Antonyms: lose, miss, pass by

Celtic Mythology: find

Top

find-

Variant spelling for the Old Irish finn, finn- [fair, white]. Names may incorporate either find- or finn- as a prefix, while others may employ the Modern Irish fionn-.

Word Tutor: find

Top

IN BRIEF: The act of discovering something.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere. — Agnes Repplier, (1855-1950), American author and essayist.

Tutor's tip: Their attempt to find (to discover; recover; locate) a finned (having an external membranous process) creature in the lake resulted in being fined (to be ordered to pay a penalty for) for trespassing.

Dream Symbol: Find

Top

Finding an object in a dream often symbolizes discovering something in our lives-finding our sense of self-identity; finding our place. The dream might also be drawing on the meaning of common idioms, such as to "find out," "find one's bearings," or "fault finding."

Wikipedia: Find

Top

For other uses, see Find (disambiguation).

The find program is a directory search utility on Unix-like platforms. It searches through one or more directory trees of a filesystem, locating files based on some user-specified criteria. By default, find returns all files below the current working directory. Further, find allows the user to specify an action to be taken on each matched file. Thus, it is an extremely powerful program for applying actions to many files. It also supports regex matching.

The related, locate programs, use a database of indexed files obtained through find (updated at regular intervals, typically by cron job) to provide a faster method of searching the entire filesystem for files by name. This sacrifices overall efficiency (because filesystems are regularly interrogated even when no users needs information)and absolute accuracy (since the database is not updated in real time) for significant speed improvements (particularly on very large filesystems). On fast systems with small drives, locate is not necessary or desirable.

1 Find syntax
2 POSIX protection from infinite output
3 Examples
4 See also
5 External links

Find syntax

This section requires expansion.

find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression]

At least one path must precede the expression. Find is capable of interpreting wildcards internally and commands must be constructed carefully in order to control shell globbing.

Expression elements are whitespace-separated and evaluated from left to right. They can contain logical elements such as AND (-a) and OR (-o) as well as more complex predicates.

The GNU find has a large number of additional features not specified by POSIX.

POSIX protection from infinite output

Real-world filesystems often contain looped structures created through the use of hard or soft links. The POSIX standard requires that

The find utility shall detect infinite loops; that is, entering a previously visited
directory that is an ancestor of the last file encountered. When it detects an infinite
loop, find shall write a diagnostic message to standard error and shall either recover
its position in the hierarchy or terminate.

Examples

From current directory

find . -name 'my*'

This searches in the current directory (represented by a period) and below it, for files and directories with names starting with my. The quotes avoid the shell expansion - without them the shell would replace my* with the list of files whose names begin with my in the current directory. In newer versions of the program, the directory may be omitted, and it will imply the current directory.

Files only

find . -name "my*" -type f

This limits the results of the above search to only regular files, therefore excluding directories, special files, pipes, symbolic links, etc. my* is enclosed in quotes as otherwise the shell would replace it with the list of files in the current directory starting with my...

Commands

The previous examples created listings of results because, by default, find executes the '-print' action. (Note that early versions of the find command had no default action at all; therefore the resulting list of files would be discarded, to the bewilderment of users.)

find . -name "my*" -type f -ls

This prints an extended file information.

Search all directories

find / -type f -name "myfile" -print

This searches every file on the computer for a file with the name myfile and prints it to the screen. It is generally not a good idea to look for data files this way. This can take a considerable amount of time, so it is best to specify the directory more precisely. Some operating systems may mount dynamic filesystems that are not congenial to find.

Search all but one directory subtree

find / -path excluded_folder -prune -o -type f -name myfile -print

This searches every folder on the computer except the subtree excluded_folder for a file with the name myfile. It will not detect directories, devices, links, doors, or other "special" filetypes.

Specify a directory

find /home/weedly -name "myfile" -type f -print

This searches for files named myfile in the /home/weedly directory, the home directory for userid weedly. You should always specify the directory to the deepest level you can remember.

Search several directories

find local /tmp -name mydir -type d -print

This searches for directories named mydir in the local subdirectory of the current working directory and the /tmp directory.

Ignore errors

If you're doing this as a user other than root, you might want to ignore permission denied (and any other) errors. Since errors are printed to stderr, they can be suppressed by redirecting the output to /dev/null. The following example shows how to do this in the bash shell:

find / -name "myfile" -type f -print 2>/dev/null

If you are a csh or tcsh user, you cannot redirect stderr without redirecting stdout as well. You can use sh to run the find command to get around this:

sh -c find / -name "myfile" -type f -print 2>/dev/null

An alternate method when using csh or tcsh is to pipe the output from stdout and stderr into a grep command. This example shows how to suppress lines that contain permission denied errors.

find . -name "myfile" |& grep -v "Permission denied"

Find any one of differently named files

find . \( -name "*jsp" -o -name "*java" \) -type f -ls

The -ls option prints extended information, and the example finds any file whose name ends with either 'jsp' or 'java'. Note that the parentheses are required. Also note that the operator "or" can be abbreviated as "o". The "and" operator is assumed where no operator is given. In many shells the parentheses must be escaped with a backslash, "\(" and "\)", to prevent them from being interpreted as special shell characters. The -ls option and the -or operator are not available on all versions of find.

Execute an action

find /var/ftp/mp3 -name "*.mp3" -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

This command changes the permissions of all files with a name ending in .mp3 in the directory /var/ftp/mp3. The action is carried out by specifying the option -exec chmod 644 {} \; in the command. For every file whose name ends in .mp3, the command chmod 644 {} is executed replacing {} with the name of the file. The semicolon (backslashed to avoid the shell interpreting it as a command separator) indicates the end of the command. Permission 644, usually shown as rw-r--r--, gives the file owner full permission to read and write the file, while other users have read-only access. In some shells, the {} must be quoted.

Note that the command itself should *not* be quoted; otherwise you get error messages like

find: echo "mv ./3bfn rel071204": No such file or directory

which means that find is trying to run a file called 'echo "mv ./3bfn rel071204"' and failing.

If you will be executing over many results, it is more efficient to pipe the results to the xargs command instead.

If running under Windows, don't include the backslash before the semicolon:

find . -exec grep blah {} ;

Search for a string

This command will search for a string in all files from the /tmp directory and below:

find /tmp -exec grep "search string" '{}' /dev/null \; -print

The /dev/null argument is used to show the name of the file before the text that is found. Without it, only the text found is printed. An equivalent mechanism is to use the "-H" or "--with-filename" option to grep:

find /tmp -exec grep -H "search string" '{}' \; -print

GNU grep can be used on its own to perform this task:

grep -r "search string" /tmp

Example of search for "LOG" in jsmith's home directory

find ~jsmith -exec grep "LOG" '{}' /dev/null \; -print
/home/jsmith/scripts/errpt.sh:cp $LOG $FIXEDLOGNAME
/home/jsmith/scripts/errpt.sh:cat $LOG
/home/jsmith/scripts/title:USER=$LOGNAME

Example of search for the string "ERROR" in all xml files in the current directory and all sub-directories

find . -name "*.xml" -exec grep "ERROR" '{}' \; -print

The double quotes (" ") surrounding the search string and single quotes (' ') surrounding the braces are optional in this example, but needed to allow spaces and other special characters in the string.

Search for all files owned by a user

find . -user <userid>

External links

GNU Findutils - Comes with the xargs and locate commands.
Official webpage for GNU find
Softpanorama find tutorial
find(1): search for files in a directory hierarchy – Linux man page
Exercises "Find"
"Find helper" - unix "find" wizard
Guide to Linux Find Command Mastery
Top 'find' commands - interesting usage

v • d • e Unix command line programs and builtins (more)

File system	cat · cd · chmod · chown · chgrp · cksum · cmp · cp · du · df · fsck · fuser · ln · ls · lsattr · lsof · mkdir · mount · mv · pwd · rm · rmdir · split · touch · umask

Processes	at · chroot · cron · exit · kill · killall · nice · pgrep · pidof · pkill · ps · pstree · sleep · time · top · wait

User environment	env · finger · id · logname · mesg · passwd · su · sudo · uptime · w · wall · who · whoami · write

Text processing	awk · comm · cut · ed · ex · fmt · head · iconv · join · less · more · paste · sed · sort · strings · talk · tac · tail · tr · uniq · vi · wc · xargs

Shell programming	alias · basename · dirname · echo · expr · false · printf · test · true · unset

Networking	inetd · host · netstat · ping · rlogin · netcat · traceroute

Searching	find · grep · locate · whereis · which

Miscellaneous	apropos · banner · bc · cal · clear · date · dd · file · help · history · info · lp · man · pax · size · tee · tput · type · uname · whatis · yes

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Donate to Wikimedia

Misspellings: find

Top

Common misspelling(s) of find

fidn

Translations: Find

Top

Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - finde, forekomme, ramme, skaffe, blive klar over
v. intr. - afsige kendelse
n. - fund

idioms:

find against afsige kendelse imod
find common ground finde noget at enes om
find fault with finde fejl hos
find favour vinde indpas
find for afsige kendelse for
find in favour of afsige kendelse til fordel for
find one's bearings orientere sig
find one's feet lære at klare sig selv
find one's way finde vej
find oneself finde sig selv
find out finde ud af

Nederlands (Dutch)
vinden, bevinden, ondervinden, verschaffen, van bed/ voedsel voorzien (als werkvoorwaarde), rechtmatig bepalen, vondst, ondervinding, bevinding

Français (French)
v. tr. - trouver, retrouver, constater, éprouver, toucher (un but), (Jur) conclure que, (Comput) rechercher
v. intr. - se retrouver, se découvrir, (Jur) se prononcer en faveur de/ contre qn (un verdict)
n. - découverte, trouvaille, perle

idioms:

find against (Jur) se prononcer contre
find common ground trouver un lieu commun
find fault trouver à redire de
find favour retrouver la faveur de
find for (Jur) prononcer/rendre un verdict en faveur de qn
find in favour of se prononcer en faveur
find one's bearings recevoir/trouver ses points de repère
find one's feet s'adapter
find one's way trouver son chemin
find oneself se découvrir, se trouver
find out découvrir
find someone out découvrir (qn)

Deutsch (German)
v. - finden, feststellen, herausfinden, befinden
n. - Fund, Entdeckung

idioms:

find against für schuldig erklären
find common ground sich einigen
find fault etwas auszusetzen haben
find favour jmdm. gefallen
find for beliebt sein
find in favour of beliebt sein
find one's bearings sich orientieren
find one's feet sich hineinfinden
find one's way hinfinden
find oneself sich befinden, sich selbst versorgen
find out herausfinden
find someone out jmdm. dahinter kommen

Ελληνική (Greek)
v. - βρίσκω, ανακαλύπτω, διαπιστώνω, γνωμοδοτώ, κηρύσσω
n. - ανακάλυψη, εύρημα

idioms:

find against (νομ.) αποφαίνομαι κατά
find common ground βρίσκω κοινό έδαφος για συνεννόηση
find fault with βρίσκω ψεγάδι σε, ψέγω, γκρινιάζω
find favour κερδίζω εύνοια
find for (νομ.) αποφαίνομαι υπέρ
find in favour of (νομ.) αποφαίνομαι υπέρ
find one's bearings προσανατολίζομαι
find one's feet ορθοποδώ, στέκομαι στα πόδια μου, ξαναβρίσκω τον εαυτό μου
find one's way βρίσκω το δρόμο μου
find oneself (ξανα)βρίσκω τον εαυτό μου, βρίσκομαι (σε)
find out ανακαλύπτω, πληροφορούμαι, μαθαίνω

Italiano (Italian)
trovare, constatare, giudicare, incontrare, ritenere, reperto, scoperta

idioms:

find against decidere contro
find fault with criticare
find favour trovare favore presso
find for/in favour of decidere in favore di
find one's feet reggersi in pedi, cavarsela
find one's way trovare la strada
find out scoprire

Português (Portuguese)
v. - encontrar, considerar
n. - descoberta (f)

idioms:

find against culpar (Jur.)
find common ground ponto (m) pacífico (em comum)
find fault with criticar
find favour aprovar
find for/in favour of ficar a favor de (Jur.)
find one's feet acomodar-se ou acostumar-se a uma nova situação
find one's way encontrar seu próprio caminho
find oneself ver-se
find out descobrir

Русский (Russian)
находить, отыскивать, открывать, обнаружить, застать, чувствовать, достигать, попадать, считать, признать, находка, открытие

idioms:

find against признать виновным
find common ground найти общее, сойтись
find fault with придираться, ворчать
find favour нравиться
find for/in favour of признать невиновным, решать в пользу
find one's feet освоиться, стать на ноги
find one's way пробраться, попасть
find oneself найтись, найти себя
find out выяснить, раскрыть, разоблачить

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - encontrar, dar con, hallar, topar, comprobar, constatar, declarar, pronunciar, parecer, estimar, opinar, pensar
v. intr. - pronunciar sentencia o fallo
n. - hallazgo, descubrimiento, encuentro

idioms:

find against decidir en contra, fallar en contra, hallar culpable
find common ground tener algo en común, pensar de la misma manera sobre algo
find fault desaprobar, censurar, criticar, culpar, poner reparos
find favour caer en gracia
find for decidir a favor de, fallar a favor de
find in favour of decidir a favor de, fallar a favor de
find one's bearings orientarse
find one's feet empezar a caminar, afirmarse, desarrollar su independencia
find one's way encontrar el camino
find oneself encontrarse, descubrir uno sus aptitudes
find out descubrir, enterarse de
find someone out descubrir, enterarse de

Svenska (Swedish)
v. - finna, påträffa, söka, nå, anse, döma (jur.), skaffa
n. - fynd, uppdrivning av räv

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
发现, 找到, 感到, 裁决

idioms:

find against 做出对...不利的裁决
find common ground 寻找共同点
find fault with 挑剔, 抱怨, 批评
find favour 受青睐
find for 做出对...不利的裁决
find in favour of 判决对...有利, 做出对...有利的判决
find one's bearings 寻找或辨明自己所处的位置
find one's feet 开始能走路, 能独立行动
find one's way 发现途径
find oneself 发觉自己的处境, 自我感觉
find out 找出, 查明, 发现

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 發現, 找到, 感到
v. intr. - 裁決
n. - 發現

idioms:

find against 做出對...不利的裁決
find common ground 尋找共同點
find fault with 挑剔, 抱怨, 批評
find favour 受青睞
find for 做出對...不利的裁決
find in favour of 判決對...有利, 做出對...有利的判決
find one's bearings 尋找或辨明自己所處的位置
find one's feet 開始能走路, 能獨立行動
find one's way 發現途徑
find oneself 發覺自己的處境, 自我感覺
find out 找出, 查明, 發現

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 발견하다, 찾아 내다
v. intr. - 평결을 내리다
n. - 발견

idioms:

find against 평결하다, 판정하다
find fault with 실수나 결점을 찾다
find for ~을 제공하다
find oneself 자신의 위치를 알다, 적성 등을 깨닫다
find out 발견하다, 생각해 내다

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 発見する, 見いだす, 見いだせる, 認める, 知る, 悟る, 分かる, ふと見付ける, 求めて得る, 届く, 供給する
n. - 発見, 獲物の発見, 見付けもの, 発見物, 掘り出し物

idioms:

find against 不利な判決を下す
find common ground 共通点を見付ける
find fault with 不平を言う, あらを探す
find favour 愛顧をえる
find for/in favour of 有利に, 味方して
find its level 能力相応に落ち着く
find one's feet 立てるようになる, 環境に慣れる
find one's level 適所に落ち着く
find one's voice 声がまた出せるようになる
find one's way 道を求めて行く, たどり着く
find oneself 衣食を自弁する, ここちがする
find out 見い出す, 発見する, 知る, 正体を見破る

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(فعل) يجد , يكتشف (الاسم) اكتشاف , اللقيه ( شيء نفيس)‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮מצא, גילה, החליט, ציד, סיפק, חש, הבחין, נעשה מודע ל-‬
v. intr. - ‮פסק‬
n. - ‮מציאה, גילוי, דבר שנתגלה‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.

To select your translation preferences click here.

Shopping: find

Top

Find Chipboard	Find A Sequoia
Find Nutrafix	Sports - Wobble Board - Where To Find

Did you mean: find, Find, Findex Com Inc, Cumméne Find, Áed Find, Find (2001 Album by Birth), Ludvig (Frederik) Find (art), FIND (abbreviation), The Find, Find (command)

Learn More

	search
	misplace
	backbite

Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:

Copyrights:

		Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Idioms. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Antonyms. © 1999-2009 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		Celtic Mythology. A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Copyright © James MacKillop 1998, 2004. All rights reserved. Read more
		Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved. eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial. Read more
		Dream Symbol. The Dreams Encyclopedia. 1995 ©Visible Ink Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Find". Read more
		Misspellings. © 1999-2009 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more

find

Contents

Find syntax

POSIX protection from infinite output

Examples

From current directory

Files only

Commands

Search all directories

Search all but one directory subtree

Specify a directory

Search several directories

Ignore errors

Find any one of differently named files

Execute an action

Search for a string

Search for all files owned by a user

See also

External links