Find all files with a filename beginning with a specified string?

Question

I have a directory with roughly 100000 files in it, and I want to perform some function on all files beginning with a specified string, which may match tens of thousands of files.

I have tried

ls mystring*

but this returns with the bash error 'Too many arguments'. My next plan was to use

find ./mystring* -type f

but this has the same issue.

The code needs to look something like

for FILE in `find ./mystring* -type f`
do
    #Some function on the file
done

Instead of a `for` loop, you should pipe `find` into `while`. — Dennis Williamson, Oct 27 '10 at 18:47
This question is a duplicate of [How can I recursively find all files in current and subfolders based on wildcard matching?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/5905054/11725753) — EvgenKo423, Jul 06 '21 at 16:23

score 342 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 25 '20 at 08:15

342

Use find with a wildcard:

find . -name 'mystring*'

edited Aug 25 '20 at 08:15

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answered Oct 27 '10 at 15:27

Sergio Tulentsev

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and to execute some function "find . -name 'mystring*' -exec [command]" for example delete "find . -name 'mystring*' -exec rm {} \;" – Eldar Oct 27 '10 at 15:31
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Where {} is a placeholder for file name :-) (so you can construct your own actions) – Sergio Tulentsev Oct 27 '10 at 15:34
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This seems to return all results *containing* the string? The – Brian Z Oct 17 '14 at 06:56
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...or `find . -iname 'mystring*'` for case insensitive search. – Frank Nocke Mar 12 '17 at 12:52
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OP refers to a single directory so insert `-maxdepth 1` before the `-name` to limit find to the current folder – jacanterbury Mar 14 '18 at 11:37
@jacanterbury: it is not clear if this directory contains other directories (besides the 100k files). It it doesn't, this is not needed. But thanks, might be useful to someone. – Sergio Tulentsev Mar 14 '18 at 11:40
@eldar I've used this, and realize that I admittedly still don't know what the \; does. Any easy explanation for future readers? – mochsner Apr 29 '22 at 02:49
@SergioTulentsev I am using If condition but not working. if [[ find /tmp/home/my_location -name 'mystring*'.ctl ]] – Bhagesh Arora May 15 '22 at 18:10

jacanterbury · Answer 2 · 2020-02-12T10:43:34.407

33

ls | grep "^abc"

will give you all files beginning (which is what the OP specifically required) with the substringabc.
It operates only on the current directory whereas find operates recursively into sub folders.

To use find for only files starting with your string try

find . -name 'abc'*

edited Feb 12 '20 at 10:43

answered Jul 13 '12 at 12:15

jacanterbury

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Don't use ls | grep. Use a glob or a for loop with a condition to allow non-alphanumeric filenames, see https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/wiki/SC2010 – Nicolas Massart Oct 26 '21 at 13:20

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 08 '18 at 09:30

If you want to restrict your search only to files you should consider to use -type f in your search

try to use also -iname for case-insensitive search

Example:

find /path -iname 'yourstring*' -type f

You could also perform some operations on results without pipe sign or xargs

Example:

Search for files and show their size in MB

find /path -iname 'yourstring*' -type f -exec du -sm {} \;

Find all files with a filename beginning with a specified string?

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