How do I use `find` to go to directory of that file

Question

I want to find a file and then enter the directory containing it. I tried find /media/storage -name "Fedora" | xargs cd but of course, I the is not a directory error.

How do I enter its parent directory with a one line command?

And what if there are multiple files from multiple locations ? — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, Jan 14 '17 at 23:13
@Serg Im searching for Fedora*.iso file and I know there is only one. If there were more then one it would enter the first direcotry, I guess — Hrvoje T, Jan 14 '17 at 23:16
In bash with `shopt -s globstar`, you could `cd /media/storage/**/Fedora`, but that doesn't stop evaluating the glob at the first match (so it's slower than steeldriver's solution. For interactive use, what I would normally do is reach for the mouse and copy/paste the directory name, (and alt+backspace as needed to strip off trailing path components I didn't want), but if you do this a lot I guess a shell function could be worth making. — Peter Cordes, Jan 15 '17 at 03:12
BTW, `xargs cd` can't possibly work. `cd` can only work as a shell builtin, because it has to modify the context of the shell itself. There's no way an `xargs` child process can do that. IDK if that's what you meant by "of course", or if the path that `find` prints contains spaces, which are split by xargs since you didn't use `-d \n` or anything. Or `find -exec {} \;`. — Peter Cordes, Jan 15 '17 at 03:16
@richard Thanks. Im a noob. Learning what built-in vs not built-in means. And english is not my language. So, continuing to learn hard with the help of good people — Hrvoje T, Jan 15 '17 at 14:07

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 14 '17 at 23:05

16

At least if you have GNU find, you can use -printf '%h' to get the directory

       %h     Leading directories of file's name (all but the last ele‐
              ment).  If the file name contains no slashes (since it is
              in  the  current  directory)  the %h specifier expands to
              ".".

So you could probably do

cd "$(find /media/storage -name "Fedora" -printf '%h' -quit)"

The -quit should prevent multiple arguments to cd in the case more than one file matches.

answered Jan 14 '17 at 23:05

steeldriver

78,509
12
109
152

1

`-quit` is also not necessarily supported. In NetBSD it's called `-exit`, see http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/62883/117599 – phk Jan 14 '17 at 23:16
2

If there isn't printf could you do -exec dirname instead? – Guy Jan 14 '17 at 23:31
@Guy good idea yes that sounds like it should work too – steeldriver Jan 14 '17 at 23:35

phk · Answer 2 · 2017-01-15T14:15:53.760

8

Similar to steeldriver's solution but using -execdir (if your find supports it, like GNU's or FreeBSD's find) in combination with pwd:

cd "$(find /media/storage -name "Fedora" -execdir pwd \; -quit)"

-quit is optional in case only there is only a single result and crawling the whole directory there is of no issue. On NetBSD it's -exit and on OpenBSD it does not exist.

edited Jan 15 '17 at 14:15

answered Jan 14 '17 at 23:15

phk

5,893
7
41
70

And what is `\;` for? – Hrvoje T Jan 14 '17 at 23:22
1

@HrvojeT Just like for `-exec` it tells `find` about the end of parameters for the command to execute. But since we want to call `pwd` without parameters here, we put the `\;` right after it. – phk Jan 14 '17 at 23:24
Are there any `find` implementations that support execdir but not `-printf %h`? Seems unlikely to me. Unfortunately neither one is required by POSIX :/ – Peter Cordes Jan 15 '17 at 03:18
1

@PeterCordes FreeBSD's `find`: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?find%281%29 (Just confirmed it on a FreeBSD 11 installation.) – phk Jan 15 '17 at 12:47
@PeterCordes Same for NetBSD (http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?find++NetBSD-current) and OpenBSD (http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man1/find.1). Latter does not support `-quit`/`-exit` at all though. – phk Jan 15 '17 at 14:07

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 15 '17 at 21:50

5

You can make find run a new shell in the directory it finds.

exec find /media/storage -name "Fedora" -execdir "$SHELL" \;

, after which the current directory will be the one which has a file named Fedora in it. ;)

Obviously this only does something resembling what you want if you are typing commands interactively.

edited Jan 15 '17 at 21:50

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

807,993
194
1,674
2,175

answered Jan 15 '17 at 03:40

BenGoldberg

151
2

Stéphane Chazelas · Answer 4 · 2017-01-15T14:10:10.603

4

With zsh:

cd /media/storage/**/Fedora([1]:h)

to cd into the first (in alphabetical order) directory that contains a file called Fedora.

**: any level of directories (hidden dirs are omitted by default, use the D glob qualifier to include them)
[1]: only the first
:h: head modifier: take the dirname.

Contrary to cd "$(find ...)", it also works if the directory name ends in a newline character. Another advantage is that you'd get a no match error message when there's no matching directory (while in most shells cd "" would do nothing silently).

A drawback is that it would crawl the whole of /media/storage before returning.

edited Jan 15 '17 at 14:10

answered Jan 15 '17 at 13:58

Stéphane Chazelas

522,931
91
1,010
1,501

In bash, `cd` with multiple args only looks at the first arg anyway, so `cd $(dirname /media/storage/**/Fedora)` would work (with `shopt -s globstar`) if there are no spaces in the path. To get it quoted properly, I think a bash array is easiest: `target=(/media/storage/**/Fedora); cd "${target%/*}"`. But at that point it would have been faster to use the mouse to copy/paste find output instead of coming up with that interactively. – Peter Cordes Jan 15 '17 at 18:40
2

@PeterCordes, many `dirname` implementations won't accept more than one argument. Note that it's not _spaces_, it's any character currently in `$IFS` (space, tab and newline by default) and wildcard characters. Note that whether `bash`'s `cd` will accept more than one argument depends on how it was compiled (`CD_COMPLAINS` in `config-top.h`). One can imagine that future versions of `bash` will also eventually implement the two arg feature like in zsh. – Stéphane Chazelas Jan 15 '17 at 20:51
Thanks. I just looked at the GNU coreutils dirname manpage. The dirname version is terrible anyway; I only mentioned it as something you might try interactively in case it worked. My array-based version doesn't suffer from any of those problems, since `"${target%*/}"` expands to only the first array element (with the `/Fedora` stripped). I think that version is fully robust against any possible characters in the pathname. – Peter Cordes Jan 15 '17 at 23:35

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 25 '20 at 09:45

There as already many answers showing how to work around the problem, and how to get something that works. However none say why it did not work in the first place.

Here is why running `xargs cd`, can not work.

It is the same problem as writing a script to change directory.

xargs starts a new process / the script runs in a new process.
cd changes the current working directory of this new process.
The new process exits.

Thus the present working directory of a process that no longer exists has been changed.

Then your call cd in the shell, it uses a built in command. It does not create a new process. So the current working directory of the shell process is changed.

See other answers for what to do.

How do I use `find` to go to directory of that file

5 Answers5

Here is why running xargs cd, can not work.

Here is why running `xargs cd`, can not work.