Find file then cd to that directory in Linux

Question

In a shell script how would I find a file by a particular name and then navigate to that directory to do further operations on it?

From here I am going to copy the file across to another directory (but I can do that already just adding it in for context.)

Answer 1

You can use something like:

pax[/home/pax]> cd "$(dirname "$(find / -type f -name ls | head -1)")"
pax[/usr/bin]> _

This will locate the first ls regular file then change to that directory.

In terms of what each bit does:

• The find will start at / and search down, listing out all regular files (-type f) called ls (-name ls). There are other things you can add to find to further restrict the files you get.
• The piping through head -1 will filter out all but the first.
• $() is a way to take the output of a command and put it on the command line for another command.
• dirname can take a full file specification and give you the path bit.
• cd just changes to that directory.

If you execute each bit in sequence, you can see what happens:

pax[/home/pax]> find / -type f -name ls
/usr/bin/ls

pax[/home/pax]> find / -type f -name ls | head -1
/usr/bin/ls

pax[/home/pax]> dirname "$(find / -type f -name ls | head -1)"
/usr/bin

pax[/home/pax]> cd "$(dirname "$(find / -type f -name ls | head -1)")"

pax[/usr/bin]> _

Answer 2

The following should be more safe:

cd -- "$(find / -name ls -type f -printf '%h' -quit)"

Advantages:

• The double dash prevents the interpretation of a directory name starting with a hyphen as an option (find doesn't produce such file names, but it's not harmful and might be required for similar constructs)
• -name check before -type check because the latter sometimes requires a stat
• No dirname required because the %h specifier already prints the directory name
• -quit to stop the search after the first file found, thus no head required which would cause the script to fail on directory names containing newlines