help with long listing + locate

stabu · 04-03-2004, 04:42 PM

Hi
The time has come for me to unleash the power of piping on the command-line. Can any one help me with the following:
I use "locate" to find a file, but I also want full details of the file, i.e. a long listing.
As it stands locate only gives me its path.
So, I reckon a pipe is in order. I tried

ls -l < locate {filename}
locate {filename} | ls -l

However none of these worked. Anybody out there quick on the command line draw?

avarus · 04-03-2004, 05:11 PM

Not very quick on the draw, but here is the answer:

You need to unleash the power of 'xargs'. Try this:

locate porn.jpg | xargs ls -l

TIM

jschiwal · 04-03-2004, 05:34 PM

You might want to use the -r (--regexp=) option to locate, because it will find any file in the database that contains the string. The example below will only locate the exact match between the last '/' and the end of the line.

locate -r '^.*/<filename>$'