How to find files whose names contain any of 2 strings?

Question

I'd like to find files whose name contain "Mar" or "Jun", how can I do this?

Daniel Beck · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-01 13:31:18Z

Your first approach (find . -type f -name "Mar" -name "Jun") had two problems:

So the only possible matches were files that were named exactly "Jun" and "Mar", i.e. none.

Instead, do the following:

You can use wildcards in the name search (* means any possibly empty sequence of characters), wrapped in quotation marks to prevent interpretation by the shell
combine the two rules with an -o (or) — this requires you two wrap the alternative rules in parentheses to override usual operator precedence, or to repeat the common -type f rule

Example:

$ ls -1
1st-of-June
January
March
$ find . -type f -name '*Mar*' -o -type f -name '*Jun*'
./1st-of-June
./March

Thanks, how about this: How can I find files that contains 2 strings together, the strings may or may not be on the same line. And what if I want to find files which satisfy this condition and also created after a specific date?
@alwbtc Please clarify, your original question stated you were looking for files with a specific name? Was that not correct, or are you now asking something totally different?
Yes, that was correct, and you answered it. Now I would like to know how to do this other search? Could you please?
@alwbtc How about you try it yourself first? The date restriction is really easy with what you learned from the answers to this question and a tiny bit of reading man find. The other part can be solved using find -exec and the grep program.

choroba · Answer 2 · 2013-02-01 12:25:07Z

up vote 2 down vote

Use find and its regex option:

find -regex '.*\(Mar\|Jun\).*'

answered Feb 1 at 12:25

choroba
3,7351616

If you use -regextype posix-extended, you won't have to escape the brackets and pipe with a \ . – evilsoup Feb 1 at 12:49

max · Answer 3 · 2013-02-02 04:40:00Z

up vote 0 down vote

This command will work

[max@localhost ~]$ find / -type f -name Mar -o -name Jun
./Mar
./Jun

UPDATE

Then this is the answer

find / -type f -name "*Mar*" -o -type f -name "*Jun*"

edited Feb 2 at 4:40

answered Feb 1 at 12:35

max
1,269625

1

This returns folders named Jun, and misses files named June or March. – Daniel Beck♦ Feb 1 at 13:34

3 Answers