fd is a super fast, Rust-based alternative to the Unix/Linux find
command. It does not mirror all of find
's powerful functionality; however, it does provide just enough features to cover 80% of the use cases you might run into. Features like a well thought-out and convenient syntax, colorized output, smart case, regular expressions, and parallel command execution make fd
a more than capable successor.
Installation
Head over the fd GitHub page and check out the section on installation. It covers how to install the application on macOS, Debian/Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Arch Linux. Once installed, you can get a complete overview of all available command-line options by running fd -h
for concise help, or fd --help
for more detailed help.
Simple search
fd
is designed to help you easily find files and folders in your operating system's filesystem. The simplest search you can perform is to run fd
with a single argument, that argument being whatever it is that you're searching for. For example, let's assume that you want to find a Markdown document that has the word services
as part of the filename:
$ fd services
downloads/services.md
If called with just a single argument, fd
searches the current directory recursively for any files and/or directories that match your argument. The equivalent search using the built-in find
command looks something like this:
$ find . -name 'services'
downloads/services.md
As you can see, fd
is much simpler and requires less typing. Getting more done with less typing is always a win in my book.
Files and folders
You can restrict your search to files or directories by using the -t
argument, followed by the letter that represents what you want to search for. For example, to find all files in the current directory that have services
in the filename, you would use:
$ fd -tf services
downloads/services.md
And to find all directories in the current directory that have services
in the filename:
$ fd -td services
applications/services
library/services
How about listing all documents with the .md
extension in the current folder?
$ fd .md
administration/administration.md
development/elixir/elixir_install.md
readme.md
sidebar.md
linux.md
As you can see from the output, fd
not only found and listed files from the current folder, but it also found files in subfolders. Pretty neat. You can even search for hidden files using the -H
argument:
fd -H sessions .
.bash_sessions
Specifying a directory
If you want to search a specific directory, the name of the directory can be given as a second argument to fd
:
$ fd passwd /etc
/etc/default/passwd
/etc/pam.d/passwd
/etc/passwd
In this example, we're telling fd
that we want to search for all instances of the word passwd
in the etc
directory.
Global searches
What if you know part of the filename but not the folder? Let's say you downloaded a book on Linux network administration but you have no idea where it was saved. No problem:
fd Administration /
/Users/pmullins/Documents/Books/Linux/Mastering Linux Network Administration.epub
Wrapping up
The fd
utility is an excellent replacement for the find
command, and I'm sure you'll find it just as useful as I do. To learn more about the command, simply explore the rather extensive man page.
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