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I wonder why aren't there any tool that enable one to find files on his harddisk very rapidly like "search everything" does .Just type a part of the file name and all files containing the keyword will show up instantly . Isn't it possible to design a program to record the names of all files in some directory in a database so that you can search the database quickly for file names ?

hvjkjdtmkgh
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  • A minor nitpick, but it might help you understand the system better. In general, filesystems don't directly support file searching or creating indexes. The job of the filesystem is to store files. Searching and indexing is done by various utility programs. It's done this way because simpler filesystem=smaller chance of bugs and it lets the user configure the level of index-building and which areas should be the targets. – Perkins Jul 28 '16 at 17:29

2 Answers2

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Run sudo updatedb and locate [ filename or part ]
updatedb updates the index database.
If you want to locate a program, run whereis [ program name ]

Scott Severance
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Gufran
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    Nice, but how to make locate search in some specific directory in linux mint ? – hvjkjdtmkgh Nov 07 '12 at 08:58
  • well for that purpose you can use find command, use it like this find [path to directory] | grep "file name or part" This will search recursively so you can just search inside the base directory and it will automatically look for the file inside any sub directory. – Gufran Nov 07 '12 at 09:02
  • For some specific directory: locate foo | grep /home/bar/baz – Scott Severance Nov 07 '12 at 09:13
  • Thanks , but can you give me an example ?I'm completely new to linux .In windows ,you write D:\foldername\ etc What's the equivalent in linux? Also ,does this tool has a GUI so that I can open the file directly ? – hvjkjdtmkgh Nov 07 '12 at 09:29
  • utilities like locate or find do not have GUI built in, you can use a third party tool like catfish. To install the tool you can search for catfish in software center or run this command sudo apt-get install catfish. After installing this you can open the program from Unity Dash. regarding the File structure in linux, there is no C, D Drives, all the partitions are mounted as directory inside root, that is / (back-slash). so everything goes directly inside /, like your Home directory (same as your user directory in windows) is located inside /home/ – Gufran Nov 07 '12 at 09:46
  • for an example, open terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+T and type sudo updatedb and enter password. Then type locate firefox, this will show any directory or file having 'firefox' in its name. Then again run whereis firefox. This will show the path to directory where firefox is installed – Gufran Nov 07 '12 at 09:51
  • Never knew it! Guy, I love you sooo much, I was already sick of manual searching all the missing headers in my system(that is a whole deal when you know only the name but nor an exact include directory). – Hi-Angel Aug 29 '14 at 06:38
  • @Gufran rather than calling a blanket find and piping the results to grep, use find's built-in search parameters. It's more efficient and lets you filter by more than just name. If you need to search for partial filenames you can use standard shell wildcards as long as you enclose the search terms in quotes. i.e. find /home -iname "*importantdoc*" for a case-insensitive search for any file with "importantdoc" in its name. – Perkins Jul 28 '16 at 17:32
  • Catfish does not work properly: it claims that it is using updatedb / mlocate, but it is not: Searches are not instantaneous (which you get when using updatedb) but it takes a long time to find files, which is not indexed and not usable for large file systems. – Markus Bawidamann May 18 '20 at 22:21
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If you are looking for file names only, it allready does this, it is called locate

For more advanced searching you can look at tracker: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Tracker (see also this question: What are the alternatives to OS X's Spotlight? )

More options you can find here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FindingFiles

Community
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Nanne
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