How to Find a File in Centos

Techwalla may earn compensation through affiliate links in this story. Learn more about our affiliate and product review process here.

Community Enterprise Operating System, abbreviated as "CentOS," is a Linux-type freely distributed operating system. While working on a CentOS computer, a user often needs to locate a particular file or a group of files having common attributes -- the same extension, for example. CentOS offers the command "find" that allows you to efficiently look for files on your hard drive.

Advertisement

Step 1

Click on the button "terminal" on the CentOS desktop to open the Linux command prompt window.

Video of the Day

Step 2

Type the command "find -name tables.txt" and press "Enter" to start searching a file. In this example, you search the file "tables.txt."

Advertisement

Step 3

Use an asterisk () in the file name as a wild-card character to search for multiple files or if you do not know the exact name. For example, the command "find -n tables." finds all files with the name "tables" and any extension such as files "tables.txt", "tables.doc" or tables.xls."

Advertisement

Advertisement

Step 4

Read the command output that is the list of found files with the full directory path. If no files are found, the command produces no output.

Video of the Day

Advertisement

Advertisement

references & resources