Equivalent of Unix find command on Windows

Question

What is the equivalent of the Unix find command on Windows?

I see that the find.exe on Windows is more like a grep. I am especially interested in the equivalent of

find . -name [filename]

Answer 1

dir <drive: [drive:]> /s | findstr /i <pattern>

- alternative -

dir /s <drive:>\<pattern>

example

dir c: d: /s | findstr /i example.txt

- alternative -

dir /s c:\example.txt

Answer 2

With no additional cmdlets installed, you can simply use Get-ChildItem:

Get-ChildItem -Filter *.zip -Recurse $pwd

Answer 3

The Find-ChildItem Cmdlet in Windows Powershell is an equivalent of Unix/Linux find command

http://windows-powershell-scripts.blogspot.in/2009/08/unix-linux-find-equivalent-in.html

Some of Find-ChildItem Options

1. Find-ChildItem -Type f -Name ".*.exe"
2. Find-ChildItem -Type f -Name "\.c$" -Exec "Get-Content {} | Measure-Object -Line -Character -Word"
3. Find-ChildItem -Type f -Empty
4. Find-ChildItem -Type f -Empty -OutObject
5. Find-ChildItem -Type f -Empty -Delete
6. Find-ChildItem -Type f -Size +9M -Delete
7. Find-ChildItem -Type d
8. Find-ChildItem -Type f -Size +50m -WTime +5 -MaxDepth 1 -Delete

Disclosure: I am the developer of Find-ChildItem cmdlet

Answer 4

If you are using Unix's find to search for files in a directory hierarchy, then the Powershell way is to use Get-ChildItem (alias is gci) cmdlet and filter the results with the Where-Object (alias is where) cmdlet.

For example, to find all files (starting from C:\Users\ and recursively) with the word 'essential' in its name, use the following:

PS> gci -Path "C:\Users\"  -Recurse | where {$_.Name -like '*essential*'}

The -like option allows you to use wildcards for pattern matching.

Answer 5

This one is not exactly GNU find, but more closely matches the linux command line philisophy under powershell:

PS> dir -recurse -ea 0 | % FullName | sls <grep_string>

Example:

PS> cd C:\
PS> dir -recurse -ea 0 | % FullName | sls "Program" | sls "Microsoft"
PS> dir -recurse -ea 0 | % FullName | sls "Program" | sls "Microsoft" | out-gridview

Note: Everything returned after "| % FullName" is a string, instead of an object.

You can also use the Where Operator, "?", however, its more work, and not much faster:

PS> cd C:\
PS> dir -Recurse -ea 0 | ? FullName -like "*Program*" 
                       | ? FullName -like "*Microsoft*" 
                       | % FullName 
                       | out-gridview

Here's a quick shortcut:

PS> function myfind {dir -recurse -ea 0 | % FullName | sls $args }

PS> cd C:\
PS> myfind "Programs" | sls "Microsoft"

#find all text files recursively from current directory
PS> myfind "\.txt$"

#find all files recursively from current directory
PS> myfind .

Answer 6

In PowerShell you can use Get-ChildItem (aka ls), as noted in other answers.

ls . -Filter *.zip -Recurse

It might also be useful to get full paths of files instead of short names.

(ls -Path . -Filter *.zip -Recurse).FullName

And you can also easily execute arbitrary commands on the files found.

(ls -Path . -Filter *.zip -Recurse).FullName | ForEach-Object -Process {
    # The $_ variable is the path to a located file.
    echo "Found file: $_"
}

Answer 7

ls c:\ file.ext -r

You can use this simple powershell command. use -ErrorAction Ignore to get rid of permission errors.

Answer 8

While not a full substitute, this simple batch file solved most of the problem for me:

# findw.bat
# 
# usage: findw dir search-pattern
#
dir %1 /s /b | findstr /i %2

Answer 9

On Windows you can use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), install a Linux VM like Debian or Ubuntu. Then you have the C-disk available under /mnt/c.

find /mnt/c/ -name [filename]

You can of course cd into the directory first.

cd /mnt/c/Users/John/Documents
find . -name [filename]

If I try this last search, I need quotes around the filename, while not when using the absolute path.

Answer 10

You can use get-childitem very similar to find.

get-childitem -recurse [startpath] -name [filetofind]

[startpath] is the path where recursion should begin (e.g. . for the current directory)

[filetofind] is what you are looking for.

It is even possible to do this from cmd (without interactieve powershell):

powershell -command "get-childitem -recurse [startpath] -name [filetofind]"