Linux find file names with given string recursively [duplicate]

Question

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How can I recursively find all files in current and subfolders based on wildcard matching? (18 answers)

Closed 2 months ago.

I'm on Ubuntu, and I'd like to find all files in the current directory and subdirectories whose name contains the string "John". I know that grep can match the content of the files, but I have no idea how to use it with file names.

Answer 1

Use the find command,

find . -type f -name "*John*"

Answer 2

The find command will take long time because it scans real files in file system.

The quickest way is using locate command, which will give result immediately:

locate "John"

If the command is not found, you need to install mlocate package and run updatedb command first to prepare the search database for the first time.

More detail here: https://medium.com/@thucnc/the-fastest-way-to-find-files-by-filename-mlocate-locate-commands-55bf40b297ab

Answer 3

This is a very simple solution using the tree command in the directory you want to search for. -f shows the full file path and | is used to pipe the output of tree to grep to find the file containing the string filename in the name.

tree -f | grep filename

Answer 4

use ack its simple. just type ack <string to be searched>