Findutils-4.1.20

The Findutils package contains programs to find files. Processes are provided to recursively search through a directory tree and to create, maintain and search a database (often faster than the recursive find, but unreliable if the database has not been recently updated).

Approximate build time:  0.2 SBU
Required disk space:     7.5 MB

Findutils installation depends on: Bash, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, GCC, Gettext, Glibc, Grep, Make, Sed.

Installation of Findutils

Prepare Findutils for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr --libexecdir=/usr/lib/locate \
        --localstatedir=/var/lib/misc

The localstatedir directive above changes the location of the locate database to be in /var/lib/misc, which is FHS-compliant.

Compile the package:

make

To test the results, issue: make check.

Now install the package:

make install

Contents of Findutils

Installed programs: bigram, code, find, frcode, locate, updatedb and xargs

Short descriptions

bigram was formerly used to produce locate databases.

code was formerly used to produce locate databases. It is the ancestor of frcode.

find searches given directory trees for files matching the specified criteria.

frcode is called by updatedb to compress the list of file names. It uses front-compression, reducing the database size by a factor of 4 to 5.

locate searches through a database of file names, and reports the names that contain a given string or match a given pattern.

updatedb updates the locate database. It scans the entire file system (including other file systems that are currently mounted, unless told not to) and puts every file name it finds in the database.

xargs can be used to apply a given command to a list of files.