Using find command to search for all pictures, or all music, etc

loadedmind · 05-17-2010, 01:25 PM

Hello all. Trying to find a way to have the find command perform a search using multiple file extensions such as "find all pics" i.e. .jpg, .png, .gif, .raw etc. I would have thought something like the following would have worked, but apparently I'm doing something wrong:

sudo find / -type f -iname "*.jpg" "*.png" "*.gif" -printf

I'm guessing find simply doesn't support more than one "-name/-iname" at a time?

Or perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way? I realize most times there's several different ways to skin a cat when a task is requested in linux/unix.

Thanks for taking the time to help,
Loadedmind

AlucardZero · 05-17-2010, 01:30 PM

You can. From the man page:

Code:

       expr1 -o expr2
              Or; expr2 is not evaluated if expr1 is true.

e.g.:

Code:

~$ find . -name "songs" -o -name "a.pl"
./a.pl
./songs

jscherer92 · 05-19-2010, 01:44 PM

Yeah that looks about right but if I were you I would not use the terminal. I would just go under the file viewer and use that search tool unless you like the terminal better.

Justin

loadedmind · 06-01-2010, 08:50 AM

Yeah, the majority of our systems don't even have Gnome/X loaded so File Viewer isn't an option.

AlucardZero, thanks. Am I to understand you correctly that a.pl is a perl script containing all of the file extensions for songs?

AlucardZero · 06-01-2010, 09:05 AM

No, a.pl is just a random file. -o means 'or' so just add more clauses.

loadedmind · 06-14-2010, 10:01 AM

Thanks!