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David542
Asked: 2012-05-25 12:33:59 +0800 CST

How to find all filenames with given extension

  • 772

I need to find all .pem files on my system. Would the following do this?

sudo find / -type f -name *.pem

If not, how would I write a find command to find every file of the sort?

linux unix find

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You're on the right track -- you just need to quote the pattern so that it gets interpreted by find and not by your shell:

    sudo find / -type f -name '*.pem'
    • 22

  2. Using find / will normally be very slow. Using locate is much faster but somewhat imprecise because it doesn't support anything more complex than substring matching. A directory called .pembroke will be found and returned by locate along with every file inside it.

    A combination of locate and grep, however, has speed and precision. Conveniently, it also does not require sudo.

    locate .pem | grep "\.pem$"

    The downside? The database locate uses is normally only updated once per day so any recent changes (additions, deletions, name changes, etc.) will not be found.

    • 4

  3. Almost!

    sudo find / -type f -name \*.pem

    or 

    sudo find / -type f -name "*.pem"

    otherwise the shell will interpret the * instead of find.

    • 1

  4. ...or if mlocate runs on your computer and you don't need the most actual data use locate command

    locate *.pam

    It's faster becouse it finds files in previously created database; not on whole system.

    • 1 
  5. sudo find / | grep .pam

    Think that should work.

    • 0