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find command usage examples

Basic find example​

Find a file with name myFile in root directory:

find / -name myFile

If the file cannot be found, nothing is output to the console. Create a myFile file in /tmp directory and reexecute the find command:

touch /tmp/myFile
find / -name myFile

As by default find searches in all the subdirectories, the myFile file is found in the /tmp directory. Output:

/tmp/myFile

Find without searching in subdirectories​

In order to limit search only to the specified directory, a maxdepth option is used:

find / -maxdepth 1 -name myFile

In this case, nothing is output to the console, as the myFile file is located in /tmp directory