Is there an equivalent of the GNU locate command in Windows 7/8?
locate can take as input a file name and gives as output all the paths where files named similarly to input are, e.g.:
locate file-with-long-name.txt
/var/www/file-with-long-name.txt
No, there is not a Windows cmd or PowerShell builtin equivalent to Linux/GNU's locate command. However, functional equivalents include cmd.exe's dir /s as described by JKarthik, and these PowerShell options:
PS> Get-ChildItem -Recurse . file-with-long-name.txt
Note the use of ., telling PowerShell where to begin the search from. You can, of course, shorten when typing at the command line:
PS> gci -r . file-with-long-name.txt
I do this a lot, so I added a function to my profile:
PS> function gcir { Get-ChildItem -Recurse . @args }
PS> gcir file-with-long-name.txt
This allows wildcards, similar to locate:
PS> gcir [a-z]ooo*.txt
See help about_Wildcards for more details. That can also be written with Where-Object like this:
PS> gcir | where { $_ -like "[a-z]ooo*.txt"}
locate has an option to match with regexes. So does PowerShell:
PS> gcir | where { $_ -match "A.*B" }
PowerShell supports full .NET Regular Expressions. See about_Regular_Expressions.
You can do other types of queries, too:
PS> gcir | where { $_.Length -gt 50M } # find files over 50MB in size
Performance of these approaches is slow for large collections of files, as it just searches the filesystem. GNU locate uses a database. Windows now has a searchable database, called Windows Desktop Search. There is an API to WDS, which someone has wrapped with a PowerShell cmdlet, here: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/14602/Windows-Desktop-Search-Powershell-Cmdlet, allowing things like:
PS> get-wds “kind:pics datetaken:this month cameramake:pentax”
with much better performance than Get-ChildItem, and this kind of rich query (and awkward syntax). Also, note that curly quotes work fine in PowerShell, so no need to edit that sample when copy/pasting it.
Maybe someone will find (or write) PowerShell cmdlets that allow idiomatic queries to WDS.
For a PowerShell solution, try this:
Get-ChildItem -Filter "file-with-long-name.txt" -Recurse
This returns all files that match the given name in the current directory and its subdirectories.
The -Filter parameter accepts wildcards. If the current directory contains system files that you don't have access to, add -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue to suppress errors.
For more information, see Get-Help Get-ChildItem.
You can use the following command on windows shell:
dir [filename] /s
Where filename is the name of the file you're looking for, and /s refers to include sub-directories in the search.
Update The following command with /B shows only bare format, exactly as required. And this seems to be a tad faster.
Do try:
dir [filename] /s /B
You can install Cygwin to mimic the linux toolset or install the MinGW port and you'll have access to a shell with almost all the familiarity of a native linux system
If you are not used to UNIX locate you don't know what you are missing.
locate returns filenames only from every drive in your PC instantly.
Type in:
locate some filename
and every name specified will show up instantly. It will NOT look inside your files for fragments. The speed comes from a database initiated with updatedb which can take time, and is normally a daily cron-job.
I could not find anything useful in this thread so I added my solution: Install Cygwin64, open a terminal, updatedb then locate
I did a test to highlight performance differences, I did a search of putty.exe
On Win10 it took 12 min 50 sec in Explorer, and 4 seconds in Cygwin terminal.
I was not interested in fragments, which was a "bonus" on Explorer search which makes it take more time. Yes, indexing is turned on.
