File Lists [ SOLVED ]

Gordon · 2012-06-01 14:54:15

Hi Folks

I hope this post is in the right place.

How do I get a list of specific files lets say imagemagick for instance when you don't know where they are.

Last edited by Gordon (2012-06-01 20:47:30)

machinebacon · 2012-06-01 14:57:25

Hello Gordon,
with the find command, for example:

find ~/ | grep image

finds all files named (or including the string) image in the folder ~/ (that's your home folder)

To find files system-wide, you need to prepend a sudo, because some folders are for root access only.

sudo find / | grep magick

or you use the search assistant Catfish (should be in the menu -> Accessories).

You can include the catfish-search in gmrun (that's the dialog that pops up when you press Alt-F2) -> http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/howto/s … andcatfish

Last edited by machinebacon (2012-06-01 14:58:27)

rhowaldt · 2012-06-01 15:05:23

^ cool, never thought of doing that... how silly of me smile
thanks for asking Flash!

machinebacon · 2012-06-01 15:24:44

Of course you can pipe the content of the search result into a file:

find ~/ | grep image > list.txt

There's another command called 'locate' (and slocate) but I never use it, so can't tell you anything about it.

Gordon · 2012-06-01 15:39:10

Hi Folks.

Thanks for that just ran

sudo find / | grep magick

and frightened myself to death with the amount of files it found.

Is there a way of limiting it to list only the main one ( the one that you download ) ? smile

Stanie · 2012-06-01 16:13:30

Gordon wrote:

Hi Folks.
Thanks for that just ran
sudo find / | grep magick 
and frightened myself to death with the amount of files it found.
Is there a way of limiting it to list only the main one ( the one that you download ) ?

Sure you can do it. Don't use the sudo find command unless you need to search system-wide (e.g. also in your root partition). You can limit the search for a specific folder - like for example

find ~/downloads | grep magick

machinebacon · 2012-06-01 16:19:36

Gordon,

just for your information:

/ is the whole folder where everything sits inside (/usr, /etc, /home, /media, /mnt, /var, ...)
~/ is only the home/username/ folder

Gordon · 2012-06-01 20:46:54

Hi Folks

Thanks for them there instructions smile :)

pidsley · 2012-06-01 20:56:11

machinebacon wrote:

There's another command called 'locate' (and slocate) but I never use it, so can't tell you anything about it.

locate is much faster than find, because it scans a database rather than looking at your hard drive. The downside is that you must update this database on a regular basis, especially after you install new software. But updating the database is easy and quick; just

sudo updatedb

I just did an update on my 160 G drive and it took 6.5 seconds. I never use find anymore, just locate. And if it returns more info than you like, you can always pipe it to "more" so you can see one screen at a time

locate magick | more

Or put the output in a file you can open with an editor

locate magick > xx
nano xx

Awebb · 2012-06-01 21:11:43

Excuse my french, but anyone grepping find output should be forced to watch episode after episode of my little pony.

find PATH -type f -iname PATTERN

Or if it's case sensitive:

find PATH -type f -name PATTERN

Or if it's about directories:

find PATH -type d -iname PATTERN

The pattern must be complete, so use a regex * on both ends and escape the * if needed.

find / -type f -iname "*magick*"

machinebacon · 2012-06-01 21:25:34

^ Thanks Awebb, duly noted smile But why not grepping?

rhowaldt · 2012-06-01 22:48:45

^ i'm guessing here, but: everytime somebody greps the output of find, God kills a cute nerdy girl. same with using regex to parse html. it's just not OK. big_smile

nah the point is (i think) that you use find and grep, two apps, while you could just use the builtin options for find to do the same thing. KISS and all, you know. you don't do 'for i in *; do echo "$i"; done' when you can just type 'ls' smile

machinebacon · 2012-06-01 22:55:56

^ All right, understood. And the results are the same? smile

rhowaldt · 2012-06-01 23:08:15

^ just tested it out, results are different, but makes sense, since i used the '-type f' option for find which only shows files... when grep just gives you both files and directories... wait, let's try something more...

they differ a little bit. i think mainly because when you do 'find -type f' followed by 'find -type d' then compare that to a full 'grep' list, grep is gonna list the files inside the directories too while find is skipping over those... so it seems find is also more efficient, not actually showing you files that don't have 'magick' in their name.

if you wanna do the test yourself:

sudo find / -type f -iname "*magick*" > find_native.txt
sudo find / -type d -iname "*magick*" >> find_native.txt
sudo find / | grep "magick" > find_grep.txt
diff -y find_grep.txt find_native.txt

machinebacon · 2012-06-01 23:21:07

Phew, here they differ quite a lot (have a try, ~/ directory with search string "*mal*" in native and "mal" in grep)

find ~/ -type f -iname "*mal*" > find_native.txt
find ~/ -type d -iname "*mal*" >> find_native.txt
find ~/ | grep "mal" > find_grep.txt
diff -y find_grep.txt find_native.txt

(on my system I have a ~/.thumbnails/normal folder, and its content is completely ignored by native find)

Gordon · 2012-06-02 11:30:43

Hi Folks

I Tried all them commands and there is certainly a lot of differences between the two.

pidsley

You were on about locate and slocate, I tried those but with no luck so I assume that I have to create some sort of database.

Please tell me where and how smile :)

Stanie · 2012-06-02 12:12:40

Gordon wrote:

Hi Folks
I Tried all them commands and there is certainly a lot of differences between the two.
pidsley
You were on about locate and slocate, I tried those but with no luck so I assume that I have to create some sort of database.
Please tell me where and how :)

Try sudo updatedb
If you want to use it with gui like Catfish and include also hidden files or even your system folders in your results, change the execute command in openbox menu to

catfish --fileman=thunar --path=/ --hidden --method=locate

EDIT: Found an interesting tutorial on YouTube about locate, database and catfish - you can even add external hard drives into your locate database...

Last edited by Stanie (2012-06-02 12:50:12)

Gordon · 2012-06-03 07:39:01

Hi Stanie.

Tried sudo updatedb and all I get is

 sudo: updatedb: command not found

machinebacon · 2012-06-03 10:00:03

^ slocate -u should do the same.

Gordon · 2012-06-03 10:18:17

Hi machinebacon

Sorry to say I get the same results

bash: slocate: command not found

I get the above as root terminal or just in terminal

machinebacon · 2012-06-03 10:34:07

Then it needs to be installed, with sudo apt-get install slocate or sudo apt-get install locate (I guess locate will do)

Awebb · 2012-06-03 11:10:50

@machinebacon:

1. every time you grep, a process is forked. Why fork a process, if the same functionality can be found in the original process?
2. In fact (or as far as I remember or at least let's assume), grep forks itself line by line to continue scanning while outputting. It would be damn slow otherwise. This is okay, if all you want is some output, but the moment you pipe it to another program, there will be more forking. It's like a big, organized, process ID based gangbang.
3. You will want to do something with your discovery most of the time. Using find's filters and -exec option, a line could look like this:

find /home -iname "xbmc*2011*log" -exec rm {} \;

Now let's grep it, shall we? Of course, we want a detailed string to be looked up, so it's egrep:

find /home | egrep "^xbmc.*2011.*log" | rm

Forks: 1 + n, while n is the number of results.

That would create one process for find, two or more egrep processes (due to it's efficient nature) and one rm process per entry we find. If the list is long enough, won't have to worry about feeding the hungry anymore, because everybody will have a fork then. Oh, wait, due to rm's incompetence as a valid unix tool, it cannot read from stdin. We'd have to cheat a little:

find /home | egrep "^xbmc.*2011.*log" | xargs rm

Count the forks. You'll come up at a lower count, but what do you have to think about?

Gordon · 2012-06-03 11:19:17

Hi machinebacon

Thanks for that, I thought it was part of #! and that I was doing something wrong. Got it now thought and it is certainly quick smile :)

rhowaldt · 2012-06-03 11:25:30

@Gordon: i got an app that will help you out a bit, i think. i know it did for me.

sudo apt-get install command-not-found

next time you type a wrong command, it will check for possibilities of what you meant and suggest them to you. it's the friendlier, more helpful version of the regular 'command not found'.

shem · 2012-06-03 12:53:14

'mlocate' is another good choice. It replaces 'locate'. Still uses 'updatedb' to make the database & 'locate' for searches. For more info about why it's better:

apt-cache show mlocate

To install:

sudo aptitude install mlocate

(I prefer aptitude, replace with apt-get if you prefer tongue )

CrunchBang Linux

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#1 2012-06-01 14:54:15

File Lists [ SOLVED ]

#2 2012-06-01 14:57:25

Re: File Lists [ SOLVED ]

#3 2012-06-01 15:05:23

Re: File Lists [ SOLVED ]

#4 2012-06-01 15:24:44

Re: File Lists [ SOLVED ]

#5 2012-06-01 15:39:10

Re: File Lists [ SOLVED ]

#6 2012-06-01 16:13:30

Re: File Lists [ SOLVED ]

#7 2012-06-01 16:19:36

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#8 2012-06-01 20:46:54

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#9 2012-06-01 20:56:11

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#10 2012-06-01 21:11:43

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#11 2012-06-01 21:25:34

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#12 2012-06-01 22:48:45

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#13 2012-06-01 22:55:56

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#14 2012-06-01 23:08:15

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#15 2012-06-01 23:21:07

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#16 2012-06-02 11:30:43

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#17 2012-06-02 12:12:40

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#18 2012-06-03 07:39:01

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#19 2012-06-03 10:00:03

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#20 2012-06-03 10:18:17

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#21 2012-06-03 10:34:07

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#22 2012-06-03 11:10:50

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#23 2012-06-03 11:19:17

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#24 2012-06-03 11:25:30

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#25 2012-06-03 12:53:14

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