find using wholename

Question

Why does this invocation of find:

find . -wholename "./path/somewhere/*.py"

Take a lot longer than

find ./path/somewhere -wholename "*.py"

Is it because the first invocation will traverse the entire tree, and for each entry (regardless of where it is in the directory tree), it will do a patternmatch with wholename, whereas the second alternative traverses only the subtree matching the first parameter to find?

Answer 1

Yes, you hit the nail on the head. This is why using -prune where possible can make a find command much faster.