Search for files in all subfolders matching specific pattern in Linux

Question

I have a directory tree as shown below. In words, the root directory contains multiple sub-directories, with arbitrary names. each of which may contain two folders: "OK" and "NotOK". These folders contain images classified as "happy" or "sad", which is reflected by their names.

root/
    dir0/
        OK/
            img_happy_001.png
            img_happy_002.png
            img_sad_001.png
            ...
        NotOK/
            img_happy_103.png
            img_happy_104.png
            img_sad_72.png
            ...
    dir1/
        OK/
            img_happy_501.png
            img_sad_233.png
            ...
        NotOK/
            img_happy_703.png
            img_happy_704.png
            img_sad_298.png
            ...
    ...

I could easily find all images classified as "happy" by doing

find . -name "*happy*.png"

However, I would like to find all images classified as "happy" that are in an "OK"-directory. How can I do this?

You can use path option, try `find . -path 'dir*/OK/*happy*'` — geckos, Jan 14 '19 at 08:58
@geckos I'm not sure that will work because `path` seems to have a limited scope — user7440787, Jun 11 '21 at 08:50

user7440787 · Answer 1 · 2019-01-14T08:56:30.370

2

you could simply pipe the results from find into grep:

find . -name "*happy*.png" | grep -v NotOK

The grep command will filter the results from find that do not contain NotOK.

Alternatively you can look at --whole-name option in find.

I believe you would need something like:

find . -name "*happy*.png" -wholename "\*/OK\*"

edited Jan 14 '19 at 08:56

answered Jan 14 '19 at 08:50

user7440787

831
7
22

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 14 '19 at 08:48

0

I acquired the desired result using

find . -type d -name "OK" -exec find {} -name "*happy*" \;

answered Jan 14 '19 at 08:48

filiphl

921
1
8
15

This way you have to run `find` twice while if you use the `-wholename` option you can do it with a single run – user7440787 Jun 11 '21 at 08:46

Search for files in all subfolders matching specific pattern in Linux

2 Answers2