Using locate to find a directory

Question

I use locate all the time to find files that I know the name of, locate is very fast and I love that. For recently created files find is great, normally with recently created files I know where basically they were created so I don't have to search my entire file system.

When I've forgotten the location of a directory however neither find nor locate seem ideal.

Locate always spits out far too much information because every file within a directory is also a match for locate. For instance if I was searching for a directory named log somewhere on my file system locate log would return tons and tons of results. If I do the same thing with find, find / -name log -type d find takes minutes to run and spits out all sorts of permissions errors every time it encounters a folder it can't read.

Is there a better way?

Answer: So I'm sticking with grep until I find something else:

locatedir () {
    for last; do true; done
    if [[ $last == *\/* ]]
    then
        locate $@ | grep "${last}\$"
    else
        locate $@ | grep "/${last}\$"
    fi
}

score 28 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 24 '14 at 02:20

28

You can use the option --regex (-r) of locate:

locate -r '/log$'

edited Jul 24 '14 at 02:20

Volker Siegel

13,065
5
49
65

answered Nov 27 '10 at 23:31

Florian Diesch

87,389

Yes (+1). locate has its own built-in regex capablility: -r or --regex ... for full range of options see: info locate – Peter.O Nov 28 '10 at 04:25
1

I knew there must be a better way! – misterben Nov 28 '10 at 12:32
So short and it works smoothly. Great contribution! Another reason to learn/master regular expressions – loved.by.Jesus Nov 08 '16 at 12:23
You don't need the two ' in this case: locate -r /log$ is enough. – simlev Sep 26 '17 at 08:56

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 27 '10 at 22:08

12

A way (I suspect there may be a better way) is to use grep to return only the those paths which end in your folder name :

locate foldername | grep /foldername$

answered Nov 27 '10 at 22:08

misterben

7,347

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 28 '10 at 18:59

5

Have you tried:

locate /home/insertusernamehere/*/filename?

or

locate file | grep -i '^/home/.*/examplesubdirectory'?

or any variation of such?

edited Nov 28 '10 at 18:59

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

60,593

answered Nov 27 '10 at 22:02

RolandiXor

51,541

This answer shows that grep isn't necessary, and as seen in the first suggested option, neither are regexps. – Tom Apr 09 '15 at 12:43

Linuxuser · Answer 4 · 2015-06-12T12:39:50.680

2

Here it is

locatedir () {
    locate "$*" | while read line
    do 
    if [ -d "$line" ] ; then echo $line ; fi
    done
}

locatedir $*

edited Jun 12 '15 at 12:39

answered Jun 12 '15 at 11:27

Linuxuser

21

1

If you can explain what changes you have made it will be helpful for other too. – Ron Jun 12 '15 at 13:15

Using locate to find a directory

4 Answers4

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