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Adrian George
Asked: 2013-08-18 02:51:46 +0800 CST

How to find all files with the same extension within a directory

  • 772

I want to search for all .conf files in /etc/.

I tried grep -r *.conf /etc, but the result isn't right.

What am I doing wrong?

command-line

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command below:

    find . -type f -name "*.txt"

    This will list all files with the extension .txt.

    The . at the start denotes the current directory. find searches recursively in all the directories below the given path. If you want the search to start somewhere other than the current working directory, specify the path, for example:

    find /etc -type f -name "*.conf"

    This searches the /etc directory and all its subdirectories for regular files with the .conf extension.

    • 302

  2. grep searches the contents of files, not the file names.

    To find all .conf files in /etc/ you'll want find:

    find /etc -name "*.conf"
    • 10

  3. I'd personally use find, but you can glob for these things too:

    shopt -s globstar
ls /etc/{,**/}*.conf

    And you can use locate and it's fast but not reliable.

    locate '/etc/**.conf'
    • 10

  4. The find command is slow, use this command will give you result immediately:

    locate "/etc/*.conf"

    More info about locate command (in mlocate package) can be found here: https://medium.com/@thucnc/the-fastest-way-to-find-files-by-filename-mlocate-locate-commands-55bf40b297ab

    • 1

  5. The following command will return all files and folders ending in .conf:

    ls -lR /etc | grep ".conf$"

    To find only files, run:

    find /etc -type f -name '*.conf'
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