Is there a way to override the Unix terminal find command?

Question

Eg: Find command to search for txt files

find . -iname "*.txt"

I want to create an alias of find command in .bash_profile so that upon sourcing .bash_profile I should be able to pass any arguments to find command to search the file types:

find txt find pdf find doc

I tried below syntax to override find command as:

find ./ -iname "$1"

where $1 can be any argument file type.

I would recommend using a new name. Aliases don't handle positional arguments well; use a function. Your notation `find txt find pdf find doc` is odd; was that meant to be 3 separate commands or 1 compound command? (Before editing, they were all on one line, so I left them on one line, but it seems more likely that you intended 3 separate commands.) — Jonathan Leffler, Feb 18 '15 at 00:44

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 18 '15 at 00:15

1

Why not write a bash script?

#!/bin/sh

for var in "$@"; do
    find . -iname "*.$var"
done

You can store this in a file, make it executable (chmod +x find-by-type), then copy it to a directory within your PATH variable. Executing would be as easy as calling:

[user@localhost ~]$ find-by-type pdf txt doc

answered Feb 18 '15 at 00:15

Chris Forrence

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I prefer standalone scripts to either aliases (in particular) or functions. There are occasions for the alternatives, but speed isn't going to be an issue with a `find` command, and the cleanliness of a separate script is a good idea. – Jonathan Leffler Feb 18 '15 at 00:46
1

You might think about using this: `command=( find . -iname "*.$1" ); shift; for opt in "$@"; do command+=( -o -iname "*.$opt" ); done; "${command[@]}"` which builds up a single `find` command to run all the searches in a single execution of `find`. That is more economical (especially on big trees) than running multiple `find` commands. You could prefix the final command with `exec` for a marginal (non-measurable) gain. The downside is that the file types would be interleaved in the output, rather than segregated by file suffix. – Jonathan Leffler Feb 18 '15 at 00:55
Good idea, @JonathanLeffler. In addition, you'd also get the files back ordered by folder/name instead of by type/folder/name. – Chris Forrence Feb 18 '15 at 00:58

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 18 '15 at 08:22

1

Open your .bashrc file (it is usually hidden press Ctrl+H to see) in your home directory and append this line.

alias finder="find . -type f -regex "

Note I use -regex which will help you match your file extension patterns.

Then execute in a shell:

source .bashrc

Afterwards, call your alias named finder with your filename/extension.

For example:

finder '*\(txt\|py\|pdf\|lst\)'

edited Feb 18 '15 at 08:22

erakitin

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answered Feb 18 '15 at 00:27

repzero

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One thing to be careful about: This would match the file named "CntxtSnstv.png". You'd need to call it without the second asterisk at the end! – Chris Forrence Feb 18 '15 at 00:33

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 12 '16 at 12:39

0

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried something like writing a function in .bash_profile:

findFile(){
    find $1 -iname "*.$2"
}

sourced .bash_profile

export -f findFile

findFile ~/Desktop txt

edited Apr 12 '16 at 12:39

Jonathan Leffler

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answered Feb 19 '15 at 02:03

camelCase

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Note that you should probably wrap `$1` in double quotes too if you ever have directory names that contain spaces (etc). – Jonathan Leffler Apr 12 '16 at 12:39

Is there a way to override the Unix terminal find command?

3 Answers3