Linux basics
Command-line interface (part 8)
Finding things around
Finding a document in a Linux framework can be troublesome on the off chance that you don’t have the foggiest idea how. The ideal approach to discover records is to use a few distinctive terminal commands. Mastering these commands can give you extensive oversight over your documents, and they are significantly more dominant than the essential search functions on other operating frameworks. Let’s take a look at them.
- “find”: The “find” operator enables you to scan for documents for which you know the relative filenames. The easiest type of command searches for records in the flow registry and recursively through its subdirectories that match the provided search criteria. You can scan for documents by name, owner, group, type, permissions, date, and other rules. Type the following command to list all files found in the current directory.
Ex: (kali@kali:~/Downloads$ find .)
To find records that match a particular pattern, use the “-name” option. You can utilize filename meta-characters such as “*,” yet you should put an escape character “\” in front of each of them. For instance, if we need to find every file that starts with “Sec” in the “Downloads” folder, we need to change our directory to the “Downloads” folder, and after that type the following command:
Ex: (kali@kali:~/Downloads$ find . -name Sec\*)
The “find” operator has a ton of alternatives accessible for refining the search. For more information about the “find” operator, run “man find” in a Terminal window and press “Enter.”
- “locate”: The “locate” option is quicker than the “find” option since it utilizes a recently built database, while the “find” command searches in the real system, through all the actual directories and records. The “locate” command restores a rundown of all pathnames containing the predefined group of characters.
Ex: (kali@kali:~/Downloads$ locate network-manager)
- “which”: This operator returns the absolute path of the executable when a command is given. It helps find the location of an executable for creating an alternative way to the program on the desktop or another place in the desktop manager.
Ex: (kali@kali:~/Downloads$ which ls)
As a matter of course, the “which” command only shows the first matching executable. To show all matching executables, utilize this command with the “-a” option.