"find: paths must precede expression:" How do I specify a recursive search that also finds files in the current directory?

user_425683 0
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I am having a hard time getting find to look for matches in the current directory as well as its subdirectories.

When I run find *test.c it only gives me the matches in the current directory. (does not look in subdirectories)

If I try find . -name *test.c I would expect the same results, but instead it gives me only matches that are in a subdirectory. When there are files that should match in the working directory, it gives me: find: paths must precede expression: mytest.c

What does this error mean, and how can I get the matches from both the current directory and its subdirectories?

find linux bash
8 Answers

I see this question is already answered. I just want to share what worked for me. I was missing a space between ( and -name. So the correct way of chosen a files with excluding some of them would be like below;

find . -name 'my-file-*' -type f -not \( -name 'my-file-1.2.0.jar' -or -name 'my-file.jar' \)
user_16006060

I came across this question when I was trying to find multiple filenames that I could not combine into a regular expression as described in @Chris J's answer, here is what worked for me

find . -name one.pdf -o -name two.txt -o -name anotherone.jpg

-o or -or is logical OR. See Finding Files on Gnu.org for more information.

I was running this on CygWin.

user_31425930

You can try this:

cat $(file $( find . -readable) | grep ASCII | tr ":" " " | awk '{print $1}')

with that, you can find all readable files with ascii and read them with cat

if you want to specify his weight and no-executable:

cat $(file $( find . -readable ! -executable -size 1033c) | grep ASCII | tr ":" " " | awk '{print $1}')
user_193040440

In my case i was missing trailing / in path. 

find /var/opt/gitlab/backups/ -name *.tar
user_44020950
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