UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

hi good day
I am using redhat linux.
Is there a better utility than the 'find' command to search for files
I am trying to search through and enitre directory such as /repos for a files that have 'UAP' in it. However there are some '.step' folders littered throughout the /repos folder at varying levels, that I want to exclude from the search, so that the search will be faster. Is there a way to do this, also is there a way to limit the search to just files created with my user account id. example

find /repos BUT -exclude folders with '.step' type f -iname '*UAP* PLUS -userid john

Is there some way to achieve this. I am mainly looking to increase speed since there are a large number of files.

thanks

Option "find -user xxx" will limit it to your files, but still it will look everywhere. Dirs contain just entry names and inode numbers, so it has to go through all the inodes to do any such filtering.

Moving all those dirs to another device and replacing the original entry names with symlinks to them means without -follow it will ignore them.

Sometimes parallel processing can speed up the find, with a find in each subtree.

To case-insensitively search under /repo for filenames matching *UAP* that are owned by john while not descending into any portion of the hiearchy under a .step directory:

Code:

find /repo \( -type f -user john -o -type d -name .step -prune \) -iname '*UAP*

The logic depends on the fact that a filename exactly matching .step cannot possibly match *UAP*. If this were not the case, another type -f could be added after -prune.

Regards,
Alister

Wow that works, thanks much.
While I was waiting I experimented with the ls command.

ls -lR | grep UAP

this command seemed to work also. It ignored the folders with the dot in front it.
What do you think?

Also is there a way with that find command (or the ls command) you showed to let the command search through the tree but instead of making it ignore the .step folder, can you write an expression that will only look in folders that had a particular name such as com_station2 no matter where such a folder exist, lets say there is a /repo/fid2/com_station2/ and /rpos/fid3/com_station2/. So that it ignores all other folders except if there is a com_station2 in the path name. And it will still search for files with *UAP* in it.

Thanks alot

Yeah. ls won't include dotfiles unless the -a option is given. If that ls|grep pipeline meets your needs, go for it.

As for your modified request:

Code:

find /repo -type -iname '*UAP*' -path '*/com_station2/*'

Regards,
Alister

great thanks very much alister. I'll be able to find any file from now on.

If it fits your needs it fits your needs, but it really doesn't do what you asked for at all.