#Mac find any file how to
#Mac find any file mac

You can already see the power of the find command just by the simple find that we have used in the previous section. Now you will have a much cleaner output that you are able to read and see the locations of the file name that you specified. The 2>dev/null tells the system to redirect any error or warning messages to null instead of your screen. If you have tried running the command above, you will probably notice this. If you start your search from the root directory, you will find so many errors and warning messages scrolling on the screen that you cannot clearly see the results you are looking for. These areas will not contain your file but the output from the command will show error or warning messages. Your file system has some locations that cannot be searched for one reason or another. The command above works– it will search and find files for you but with one major problem. To search the applications directory, I would use the following command.įind /users/Eric/Applications -name test.exe Making the Search Readable If I only want to search from my current directory I would use the period to define my current directory. So, if I am looking for a file called test.exe and I want to search my entire disk, I would want my starting point to be the root directory, so my command would be as shown below. The current and root directory are denoted as shown below. You can start from your current directory, the root directory, or a specific path and directory that you provide. The command will recurse or move through each subdirectory below the starting point looking for your file. You know the name of the file you want to search for but you will need to decide where you want to begin searching. The find command takes the following format. The first is the name of the file and the second is the starting search location. In order to locate a file using the find command, you will need to know at least two parameters for the command.

#Mac find any file how to

We will simply review how to find a file on our disk drive.

The good thing is that once you get some of the basics down and get comfortable, it’s not so bad and it becomes one of the very powerful tools you have available to you in the command line environment.Ī bit later, we will briefly discuss some of the more complicated and powerful things you can do with find, but for our purposes here, we are just going to learn the basics. You will see multiple pages of information on how to use it. If there is any doubt, just look at the man page for the find command. The number of parameters, options, and ways to use it can be overwhelming and frustrating if you’re unsure of what you’re doing. Well, the find command can seem simple, but it is actually one of the more complicated commands you will find with Terminal. Just type the command and the name of the file you want to find. At first thought, you may think that this will be a simple command with not much to it.

#Mac find any file mac

If you’re looking to find a file on Mac Terminal, the find command is what you will be using to accomplish this task. What if I see lots of permission denied warnings?.Can I use the Find command to find a Folder?.Why not always search from the root directory?.