How to Search for Files Recursively into Subdirectories

Question

I am trying to look for all XML files in a particular directory and all sub-directories (recursively) inside it.

ls -R *.xml is only listing files in the current directory. I am quite sure, the sub-folders themselves have several .xml files, but none are showing up.

Is this a configuration issue?

You can do `ls -R | grep .xml` – KeyC0de Apr 16 '17 at 18:03 — KeyC0de, Apr 16 '17 at 18:03

score 241 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 19 '17 at 22:03

241

You can do it with find only:

find . -name '*.xml'

. is the current directory. If you need to search in another directory, replace . with the directory path.

edited Nov 19 '17 at 22:03

George Birbilis

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answered Jun 13 '13 at 20:22

KaeruCT

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Does it search for the required file recursively in the directory rooted at current directory. In my case it just checked in the current directory only, didn't check the subdirectory. – Mostafiz Rahman Sep 30 '14 at 20:24
1

@mostafiz, you need to quote the '*.xml' part. I'll edit my answer. – KaeruCT Oct 01 '14 at 14:39
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Actually I searched for `.php` files in current directory. But it returned only `.php` files in current directory, didn't searched recursively in sub-directories. That's why I'm asking whether `find` command searches recursively or not. – Mostafiz Rahman Oct 01 '14 at 16:52
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@mostafiz, the `find` command searches recursively. If you don't quote the parameter, I think your shell might do an expansion on the `*`, so it will match the files in the current directory. – KaeruCT Oct 01 '14 at 19:38
All right! May be I'd made some mistake. Now it is working perfectly! – Mostafiz Rahman Oct 02 '14 at 14:02
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you can use `-regex` or `-iregex` instead of `-name` if you want to use a regex. – Kip Jan 03 '17 at 21:24
Awesomesauce. Simple and effective! – wogsland Sep 08 '17 at 11:30
thanks, needed that in Raspbian, combined with |shuf -n 1 at the end to pick one file randomly from the recursive list (to play a random .mp3 file from a folder hierarchy if some motion sensor was on) – George Birbilis Nov 19 '17 at 21:47

score 133 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 15 '15 at 19:42

133

Try using Find

sudo find . -print | grep -i '.*[.]xml'

edited Jun 15 '15 at 19:42

DavidM

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answered Jun 13 '13 at 20:16

Mitch

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is the sudo must, or it's there to ensure super user privileges? – Shamim Hafiz - MSFT Jun 13 '13 at 20:36
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I let you decide. [Sudo](http://s1296.photobucket.com/user/joetjo/media/2013-06-13_2340_zpsecf4b1de.png.html), [No Sudo](http://s1296.photobucket.com/user/joetjo/media/2013-06-13_2340_001_zps4e3e080b.png.html). – Mitch Jun 13 '13 at 20:44
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Just out of interest. What is the advantage of `find` over `ls -R`? – don.joey May 22 '14 at 09:21
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@don.joey This might help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13830036/difference-between-using-ls-and-find-to-loop-over-files-in-a-bash-script – Mitch May 22 '14 at 10:08
@ShamimHafiz, sudo is useful if you need to search in a location where your current user does not have read right, I think this was the reason why sudo was included in command, just to be sure that you'll get all possible results – Rodislav Moldovan Oct 01 '14 at 14:51
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-1 for mixing `find` and `grep`, when `find` can do filtering using both regexes and globs, and not using `find`'s `-print0` and grep's `-z` when you do need to mix. – muru Apr 03 '15 at 06:54
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What is the print statement for, when removing it or not, the result is the same. – user1767754 Jun 30 '15 at 16:51
@Mitch the image hosting site you are using is blocked from where I am. Can you please share what the images were showing...? :) – Christian Sep 20 '16 at 13:20
@Christian Try [Sudo](https://1drv.ms/i/s!AoVGYN7yjGEbgT6WYYWBXqp1szMm), [No Sudo](https://1drv.ms/i/s!AoVGYN7yjGEbgT9e_xRSdCNMo0EN). – Mitch Sep 20 '16 at 13:47

score 24 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 13 '13 at 20:10

24

Try this command:

ls -R | grep '.*[.]xml'

ls doesn't have options to filter the output. For that you would need to use pipe. This passes the output from ls to grep, which then filters them to show just the .xml files.

answered Jun 13 '13 at 20:10

Rohit Jain

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Anyway to get this to show the directory it came from? – AdamO Jul 28 '15 at 20:55
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Mandatory link: [Why *not* parse `ls`?](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/128985) – Ruslan Apr 24 '17 at 11:02

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy · Answer 4 · 2018-12-30T11:32:23.093

bash

Using globstar shell option, we can make use of recursive globbing ./**/*

bash-4.3$ shopt -s globstar
bash-4.3$ for i in  ./**/*.xml; do printf "%s\n" "$i" ; done
./adwaita-timed.xml
./bin/hw5/stuff/book/chapter42servletexample/build/web/META-INF/context.xml
./bin/hw5/stuff/book/chapter42servletexample/build/web/WEB-INF/beans.xml
./bin/hw5/stuff/book/chapter42servletexample/build/web/WEB-INF/web.xml

Perl

Perl has a module Find, which allows for recursive directory tree traversal. Within the special find() function, we can define a wanted subroutine and the directory that we want to traverse, in this example that's .. The one-liner in such case would be:

bash-4.3$ perl -le 'use File::Find; find(sub{-f && $_ =~ /.xml$/ && print $File::Find::name},".")' 
./adwaita-timed.xml
./CLEAR_DESKTOP/blahblah/hw5/stuff/book/jsf2demo/build/web/WEB-INF/beans.xml
./CLEAR_DESKTOP/blahblah/hw5/stuff/book/jsf2demo/build/web/WEB-INF/web.xml
./CLEAR_DESKTOP/blahblah/hw5/stuff/book/liangweb/build.xml

Python

While Perl has a whole module dedicated to recursive tree traversal, Python has a neat function walk() that is part of os module, and repeatedly returns tuple of topmost path, list of all subdirectories, and list of filenames. We can do the following:

bash-4.3$ python -c 'import os,sys; [ sys.stdout.write(os.path.join(r,i)+"\n") for r,s,f in os.walk(".") for i in f if i.endswith(".xml") ]' 
./adwaita-timed.xml
./CLEAR_DESKTOP/blahblah/hw5/stuff/book/jsf2demo/build/web/WEB-INF/beans.xml
./CLEAR_DESKTOP/blahblah/hw5/stuff/book/jsf2demo/build/web/WEB-INF/web.xml
./CLEAR_DESKTOP/blahblah/hw5/stuff/book/liangweb/build.xml

This might be far neater as a script:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os,sys 
for r,s,f in os.walk("."): 
    for i in f: 
        if i.endswith(".xml") 
             print(os.path.join(r,i))

find

Other answers have mentioned find for recursive traversal, and that's the go-to tool for the job. What does need mention is the fact that find has multiple command line switches, such as -printf to print output in desired format, -type f to find only regular files, -inum to search by inode number, -mtime to search by modification date, -exec <command> {} \; to execute a particular command to process the file with passing file as argument ( where {} is standard find placeholder for current file) , and many others so please read the manpage for find.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 19 '20 at 11:01

0

Inside the Gnome Filemanager you can click on the magnifying-glass icon (in the top-right usually) and then start typing to search in the current folder.

For some people (me) this is much easier that using the command-line.

answered Oct 19 '20 at 11:01

Hendrik Jan

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How to Search for Files Recursively into Subdirectories

5 Answers5

bash

Perl

Python

find

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