Using find to find files

Question

If I'm in the root directory, can I use find to search all the directories below it for a file?

I tried find stdio.h but it didn't find anything. However I know that that file is in the filesystem somewhere. How do I find it?

Answer 1

It's in /usr/include/stdio.h, but for future reference run

$ locate stdio.h

Don't forget to run updatedb first. On Cygwin, you'll want to run it as Administrator.

To look in the current directory and its children:

$ find . -name stdio.h

To look everywhere beneath the root directory:

$ find / -name stdio.h

You tagged this as a Cygwin question, so to search the entire C drive, you could run

$ find /cygdrive/c -name stdio.h

but that's likely to be much slower than searching from an Explorer window.