Re: Find command explanation

[James Youngman]

On 7/2/06, AOB Technologies Ltd. <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
> When I type "find --help" at my RedHat Linux (model 2001 or so) I get all the 
> syntax of the command with so many parameters.
> Nevertheless, it is very hard to understand the proper use for a desired kind 
> of result and some examples or further break-down explanation about the 
> parameters would help a lot.

Examples and more detailed explanations are int he documentation.
This is available as ful Info documentation ("info find") or in a
briefer form more suitable for quick reference as a manual page ("man
find").   Both types of documentation include examples.


> For example, the option -mount or -mmin are not explained and thus I don't know 
> what would be their result.
>
> In particular, I'm looking for files containing certain text string (probably 
> DOC files). Is there any specific format for this command to meet this 
> requirement?

No, that's not really the UNIX way of doing things.  The UNIX paradigm
is to have a set of tools that interoperate effectively.  Each tool
should do a small number of things, but do them well.  The tools
should be easy to combine to solve the overall problem.  You might
find it helpful to read a book on Unix, for example "Unix in a
Nutshell" or an introduction to Linux.

The tool designed for searching for strings in text files is called
"grep".   You might salso find "man intro" helpful.

James.