Find and Locate Command

You can search files using the find command. Also find command search files or directories through the entire file system.

I have created a file name as file1.txt at my current location

ubuntu@ip-172-31-25-118:~/A/B$ touch file1.txt

ubuntu@ip-172-31-25-118:~/A/B$ pwd

Output: /home/ubuntu/A/B

Now I am at home location. Run this command

ubuntu@ip-172-31-25-118:~$ find . -name file1.txt

Here . represent it will start finding from the current directory

Output: ./A/B/file1.txt

You can give the type of the file. Means whether you are trying to find a file or a directory.

Eg: find . -type f -name file1 -> It will search file on the basis of simple file.

find . -type d -name file1 -> -> It will search file on the basis of directory.

Locate command is similar to find command but the difference is that locate command search into it's database.

Eg: ubuntu@ip-172-31-25-118:~$ locate file1.txt

Output: Command 'locate' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install plocate

Then login through root and run updatedb

ubuntu@ip-172-31-25-118:~$ sudo su -

root@ip-172-31-25-118:~# updatedb

Output: Command 'updatedb' not found, but can be installed with:

apt install locate # version 4.9.0-5, or

apt install plocate # version 1.1.19-2ubuntu1

Then check if mlocate is installed or not

To check: rpm -qa | grep mlocate

To install: apt install locate

Then run updatedb as a root and run locate command

ubuntu@ip-172-31-25-118:~$ locate file1.txt

Output: /home/ubuntu/A/B/file1.txt

Also it counts how many files are available with same name

Syntax: locate -c filename/directoryname