Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!bu-cs!buengc!bph
From: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: searching for a file
Message-ID: <2883@buengc.BU.EDU>
Date: 17 May 89 01:55:15 GMT
References: <1530@cmx.npac.syr.edu> <167@attcdso.UUCP>
Reply-To: bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
Followup-To: comp.unix.questions
Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng.
Lines: 26

In article <167@attcdso.UUCP> ram@attcdso.UUCP (R. Meesters, Tech Support, AT&T Canada DSO ) writes:
>In article <1530@cmx.npac.syr.edu>, gefuchs@skolem.uucp (Gill E. Fuchs) writes:
>> 
>> how would one search for a filename in a directory hierarchy?
>
>I often use 	find / -name firp -print 	to find files when I don't
>know where the heck they exist.

Some versions of find(1) (notably the one with this here Umax) are
implemented to look in a database (usually stored in /usr/lib/find.code)
that is updated periodically with the names of all world-accessible
files on the system.  When invoking find(1), you simply use

	find pattern

which gives the same output as

	find / -name pattern -print

except that any files written since the database was updated (weekly,
likely) won't be available, but the amount of time it takes to get the
whole set of pattern-matching filenames is miniscule compared to how
long a regular directory-search takes.

				--Blair
				  "I think it's alright..."