CertiGuide to A+ (A+ 4 Real)  9  Chapter 5: The Linux Operating System       9  Basic Concepts and Procedures for Creating, Viewing and Editing Files and Directories            9  Common Commands

find - Search For Files In A Directory Hierarchy 1 diff - Find Differences Between Two Files

When one needs to search for a file through a large number directories, the locate command will do this with greater speed than the find command. Locate does this by having previously examined the system’s files and directories and storing the information in a database which it can search very quickly. The present version of locate (actually called slocate) also stores each directory and file’s access privileges so users cannot see files for which they do not have read access. The general form is:

locate [options] search_string

A search string can be any character string that you may want to match. The search string may be some part of file name and locate will show you any files that have that string within the name. In other words, that string can occur in any part of the name. For example, the string test would match files such as: testing, atester, and newtest. The string can occur at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of of the file or directory name.

find - Search For Files In A Directory Hierarchy 1 diff - Find Differences Between Two Files