Why doesn't find work recursively with a wildcard over SSH?

Question

I'm connected to a CentOS server through SSH from macOS. When I try to find with a wildcard at the beginning, it seems to only search the current directly, no recursion. But if I put the wildcard at the end of the filename, it works. I don't have this problem on the local Mac.

# find . -name *.inc
./copra_xml_gen.settings.inc
#
# find . -name auth.inc
./common_v4/auth.inc
./v5_old/common/auth.inc
./common/auth.inc
./v6/common/auth.inc
./v5/common/auth.inc
#
# find . -name auth*
./common_v4/auth.inc
./v5_old/common/auth.inc
./common/auth.inc
./v6/common/auth.inc
./v5/common/auth.inc

You realise, that by writing doesn't twice, you actually say does, right? — LPChip, Jun 15 '18 at 16:04
In the first example, it only finds one file, but I want it to find everything ending with `*.inc` — Elliott B, Jun 15 '18 at 16:11

glenn jackman · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-17T12:25:32.477

2

The shell is performing filename expansion before invoking find. See https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Shell-Expansions

You want to protect the pattern from the shell:

find . -name '*.inc'

or

find . -name \*.inc

In your current directory:

you have a file that matches *.inc and the shell replaces that word with the actual filename in your find command.
you do not have a file that matches auth*, so the pattern is not replaced.

edited Jun 17 '18 at 12:25

answered Jun 15 '18 at 16:11

glenn jackman

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Makes sense, thank you. But what do you mean by "the shell puts replaces that"? – Elliott B Jun 17 '18 at 06:49
Sloppy writing. Edited. – glenn jackman Jun 17 '18 at 12:25

Why doesn't find work recursively with a wildcard over SSH?

1 Answers1