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13

How can I find a particular directory in a terminal window in Linux? I think it involves using grep, but I'm not sure how.

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removing find-in-files tag since you are locating a directory, no file-content-search is implied. – nik Jul 2 '10 at 5:44
    
What do you know about the directory that would allow you to find it? – David Z Jul 2 '10 at 5:58
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you have to provide at least some search criteria, "particular" is a bit vague. one can find items on the disc based upon names, relation ships, sizes, content, etc etc. – akira Jul 2 '10 at 7:16
up vote 46 down vote accepted

Would you be looking for something like this?

find . -type d | grep DIRNAME
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what's wrong with find . -name DIRNAME -type d? – Benjamin Bannier Jul 2 '10 at 5:47
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@honk, Nothing :-) -- the OP seems to like grep; and we all like variety – nik Jul 2 '10 at 5:51
    
whats the difference? – Dobler May 22 '15 at 5:13
    
Five years later I did notice the answer in the comment was slower to process than the original answer. Maybe a glitch. Anyone? Bueller? – aCodeSmith Jun 17 '15 at 3:45
up vote 17 down vote

If you want to find a particular directory that might be anywhere on your computer, the following will work, but it might take a while.

find / -name DIRNAME -type d
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And, if you want to find within the working directory -- replace '/' with '.' -- could get quicker. – nik Jul 2 '10 at 5:52
up vote 2 down vote

If you have it installed, locate is designed for this. Google "man locate"

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Though locate won't provide you real-time results, but instead returns the results it gathered while updatedb was last run. If the filesystem doesn't change much, then it isn't a real problem and locate is very fast. – Janne Pikkarainen Jul 29 '10 at 11:12
    
-1 Locate is designed to find files, not directories. Or is there an option I am not aware of? – Martin R. Jul 13 '17 at 16:26
    
locate works just fine for directories. – TREE Jul 13 '17 at 19:10

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