Re: [gentoo-user] Search filesystem with a wildcard

[Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>]

On 27/2/2011, at 6:30am, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Sunday 27 February 2011 03:46:48 Stroller wrote:
>> On 26/2/2011, at 5:33pm, Grant wrote:
>>> 
>>> find /my/folder -type f -name '*foo*.txt'
>> 
> 
> He didn't quote the search string and neither did the grandparent. Find will 
> do what he's asking and it's most unlikely that's what he wants.
> 
> Grant, you have
> 
> find /my/folder -name foo*.txt
> 
> but you want
> 
> find /my/folder -name 'foo*.txt'

AIUI using `find /my/folder -name foo*.txt` (i.e. unquoted) the shell will pass the * to find if it can't expand it itself.

So as long as he doesn't have a foo*.txt in his current working directory then either command should work fine.

$ ls my/folder/
foo.txt
$ ls foo.txt 
foo.txt
$ rm foo.txt 
$ find my/folder -name foo*.txt
my/folder/foo.txt
$ ls fo*.txt
ls: cannot access fo*.txt: No such file or directory 
$ find my/folder -name fo*.txt
my/folder/foo.txt 
$ find my/folder -name *fo*.txt
my/folder/foo.txt
$ find my/folder -name '*fo*.txt'
my/folder/foo.txt
$ 

I maintain that if OP wanted useful advice he should have demonstrated stuff like the outputs of his find commands and of `ls foo*.txt` and `ls /my/folder/foo*.txt`. I am getting tired of giving this advice here.

Stroller.