Reverse Find

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:54:00 -0700

I recently had need to do a reverse find, and couldn’t discover any programs that offer this functionality. I decided to work around the issue using a bash function, loops, and find.

This function can be stuffed into your ~/.bash_profile, and referenced wherever you need it.

rfind()
{
    rfind_path=&quot;${PWD}&quot;
    while [[ &quot;${rfind_path}&quot; != &quot;/&quot; ]]; do
        rfind_search_paths=&quot;${rfind_search_paths} ${rfind_path}&quot;
        rfind_path=$(dirname &quot;${rfind_path}&quot;)
    done
    
    find ${rfind_search_paths} / -maxdepth 1 $@ -print -quit
}

As an example, let’s say I’m in /home/user/docs, and I execute rfind somefile.txt. rfind will actually build a command and execute the following:

Bash on Chris Irwin

Reverse Find