From the course: Linux Tips

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Finding or locating files

Finding or locating files - Linux Tutorial

From the course: Linux Tips

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Finding or locating files

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- [Instructor] Discovering where files are stored on a Linux system helps us explore and lets us track down specific files when needed. On most Linux systems, there are two tools we can use to discover where files are kept. These are find and locate. Find actively searches the disk to find files and locate relies on a database that gets generated periodically to provide quick results. There are a few differences to be aware of here. Find goes searching through the file system when you run it, and so it can take some time to find what you're looking for. Locate updates its database periodically and gives you an instant result if there's a file it knows about that matches your search. Locate may not know about files that were recently added and may still think it knows about files that were recently deleted. But because find is looking in real time, it will be able to find newly created files and won't show you files that no…

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