Chapter 8: Where’s That File?

Overview

In This Chapter

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  Finding a file when you know the filename with the find program

  
  


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  Looking for a file when you know only part of the filename

  
  


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  Finding a file when you know what’s in it with the grep program

  
  


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  Looking for files on other computers on your network

  
  


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  Looking for a directory

  
  


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  Knowing what to do with the files you find

  
  


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  Doing something else while the computer searches for your file

  
  


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  Sharing files by using the ln command so that files appear in more than one directory

  
  

Doncha love to set up lots of different directories so that you can organize your files by topic, program, date, or whatever suits you? We do. After you have files in all those directories, however, you can also easily lose them. Is that budget memo in your Budget directory, your Memos directory, your ToDo directory, Fred’s Budget.Stuff directory, or somewhere else?

Two programs can help you find files: find and grep. Alternatively, you can use the ln command to create links to your files so that a file can appear in several directories at a time and you have that many more opportunities to find it.