Unix find: list of files from stdin

Question

I'm working in Linux & bash (or Cygwin & bash).

I have a huge--huge--directory structure, and I have to find a few needles in the haystack.

Specifically, I'm looking for these files (20 or so):

foo.c
bar.h
...
quux.txt

I know that they are in a subdirectory somewhere under ..

I know I can find any one of them with find . -name foo.c -print. This command takes a few minutes to execute.

How can I print the names of these files with their full directory name? I don't want to execute 20 separate finds--it will take too long.

Can I give find the list of files from stdin? From a file? Is there a different command that does what I want?

Do I have to first assemble a command line for find with -o using a loop or something?

Answer 1

If your directory structure is huge but not changing frequently, it is good to run

cd /to/root/of/the/files
find . -type f -print > ../LIST_OF_FILES.txt #and sometimes handy the next one too
find . -type d -print > ../LIST_OF_DIRS.txt

after it you can really FAST find anything (with grep, sed, etc..) and update the file-lists only when the tree is changed. (it is a simplified replacement if you don't have locate)

So,

grep '/foo.c$' LIST_OF_FILES.txt #list all foo.c in the tree..

When want find a list of files, you can try the following:

fgrep -f wanted_file_list.txt < LIST_OF_FILES.txt

or directly with the find command

find . type f -print | fgrep -f wanted_file_list.txt

the -f for fgrep mean - read patterns from the file, so you can easily grepping input for multiple patterns...