CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shell
Sumaia
Sumaia

Reputation: 1

Change directories

I am having some trouble in doing some comands on shell.
My problem is that I want to change directories more specifically to a directory which I don't know but that contains the file named xxx. How can I change directly to that directory that contains that file? If I knew the names of the directories that contained that file would be easier because I only had to use cd ~/Name of directory. Can anyone help me? thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 255

Answers (4)

Dennis Williamson
Dennis Williamson

Reputation: 359855

If you have GNU find:

cd "$(find /startdir -name 'filename' -printf %h -quit)"

You can replace "/startdir" with any valid directory, for example /, . or `~/.

If you want to cd to a directory which is in the $PATH that contains an executable file:

cd "$(dirname "$(type -P "filename")")"    # Bash

or

cd "$(f=$(type -P "ksh"); echo "${f%/*}")"    # Bash

or

cd "$(dirname "$(which "filename")")"

Upvotes: 2

Bakudan
Bakudan

Reputation: 19482

BASH

cd `find . -name "*filename*" | head -1`

This is kind of a variation to Qiau answer. Finds the first file which contains the string filename and then change the current directory to its location.

* is a wild card, there may be something before and/or after filename.

Upvotes: 0

Qiau
Qiau

Reputation: 6165

In several linux systems you could do:

$ cd `find . -name "filename" | xargs dirname`

But change "filename" to the file you want to find.

Upvotes: 1

karlphillip
karlphillip

Reputation: 93410

If you don't know where a file is, go to the root of the system and find it:

cd /
find . -iname filename

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions