Find coommand does not include the hidden folder for searching

hitesh_ingole2000 · 05-20-2013, 06:37 AM

The scenario is as below
/abc/xyz/
The folder xyz folder contains .A,.B,C
where A and B are hidden folders
all the folders contain file ending with T
The command which iam using is

find /abc/xyz/* |grep "T$"
/abc/xyz/C/slpT
/abc/xyz/C/polT

now i only get file from C and not from .A and .B that is the hidden folders are excluded

mina86 · 05-20-2013, 06:56 AM

First of all, do not use grep, but “-name \*T”. Second of all, it's not find that is skipping hidden directories, but shell when you pass “/abc/xyz/*”. Instead, just do:

Code:

find /abc/xyz -name \*T

David the H. · 05-21-2013, 11:07 AM

The basic syntax for find is this:

Code:

find <start_dirs> <global_opts> <matching_opts> <actions>

Note that you should give it directories to start from, not files (If you already know where the files are, why would you need find?). And the use of "*" style shell globbing patterns will usually expand into a list of files (and/or directories) before the command is run.

Note too that find's -name matching option and its relatives also use globbing patterns, which need to be escaped by quotation marks or backslashes so that the shell doesn't try to interpret them first.

Here are a couple of good links about using find:
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/UsingFind
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Find.html

Finally, if you don't need to search recursively, and just need to match files by names only, shell globbing will be faster and more efficient than find. You can enable the dotglob shell option to match hidden files, and use a simple echo or printf for printing, if you just want to list them.

Code:

shopt -s dotglob nullglob
printf '%s\n' /abc/xyz/.[AB]/*T /abc/xyz/C/*T

shopt -s dotglob nullglob extglob
printf '%s\n' /abc/xyz/*(.)[ABC]/*T

The second one uses bash's extended globbing for greater brevity.

mina86 · 05-21-2013, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David the H.

Note that you should give it directories to start from, not files (If you already know where the files are, why would you need find?).

There are uses of find with files given on command line. For instance, having a list of files, delete those created more than a week ago.

David the H. · 05-21-2013, 01:25 PM

Yes, indeed. I'm aware of that. You can run files through it if you want to evaluate them according to some criterion that find is good at. But that's a relatively rare exception to the rule, and not what the OP was asking about.

I'd probably recommend using a shell loop and tests instead such cases anyway, depending on the exact circumstances of the operation.

mina86 · 05-22-2013, 04:03 AM

Granted, but “you should give it directories” sounds too me as a bit of a strong statement. “you usually give it directories” would sound better.