Q&A for How to Find a File in Linux

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What does the 'ls' command do?

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The 'ls' command lists all files in the current directory you are working in. To find out what directory you are working in, type 'pwd' (stands for "print working directory").

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Question

Which command will display the last ten lines of a file?

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You have to used tail command to display the last lines of a file, the command used is, "tail -n filename." To display last 10 lines the command will be: tail -10 filename.

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How can I find a file in the root directory if I've forgotten the name and the directory in which it was placed?

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You can try searching for a file extension, or checking places where files are commonly saved, such as your home directory. If it's a text file, you can try using a recursive grep search ('grep -R') with text that you remember from the file as search criteria.

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My teacher wants me to use the command ls with ? to find certain files, but those file does'nt all have the same amount of charactere. How can I do?

Nithik R

Community Answer

Using `ls` you can find files that contain the specific letters you specify. For example, you want to find all files in the directory that contain "abc" in their name, type " ls -d *abc* " It will list all matching files. But if you want to find files more recursively, type " find | grep -r "abc" " You may remove the "-r" if you don't want to search too deep.

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Question

I want to search a file test.sh in home dir . If this file exists, then we need to print the path or else we need to create a same test.sh file and need to write "hello" in the created file. How can we do?

Nithik R

Community Answer

To find the file, type: `find ~/ -iname "test.sh" ` This will print the path to your file, if it exists. If you didn't find the file you are looking for, try searching in other places. To make a file and print hello, type this: ` touch test.sh ; echo "hello" > test.sh `

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