Searching for files within subdirectories?

Question

I have a tree of parent folder and subfolders. The subdirectories have similar names. I would like to search for files stored in the sub-directories. How can I do that?

For example:

Parent-Directory
  Sub-Directory 1
    input save bad
  Sub-Directory 2
    input save bad
  Sub-Directory 3 
    input save bad

Each of the sub-directories contain three folders named (input, save and bad). I only would like to search for files within the bad subdirectories.

Answer 1

Assuming you want to do a recursive search using find in each of the bad directories that are a level below directory called Main Directory:

find 'Main Directory'/*/bad ...rest of find options...

I've left the rest of the find options out because you never say what you want to search for.

find is able to take more than one directory as the starting point for its search. Here, we give it a filename globbing pattern that will be expanded by the shell to the paths of the various bad directories.

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Assuming you just want to print the pathnames of all the (regular) files in or beneath those directories:

find 'Main Directory'/*/bad -type f

If the bad directories do not have any subdirectories that you need to look inside, and if the number of files that you need to process is not many thousands, you would be able to just use

'Main Directory'/*/bad/*

(where the final * is assumed to match the filenames of the files you need to process) with whatever utility you need to use. For example, with ls:

ls 'Main Directory'/*/bad/*

Answer 2

Your question is not clear, but I assume you would like to find files in the subdirectory "BAD", you can run this command in the main directory:

find . -maxdepth 2 -type d -name "BAD" 

or use

find . -name "*BAD*" -type f -o -name "*BAD*" -type d

explanation

the -o command ors the arguments after the filepath completely, such that find . -name "string" -type f -o -type d computes find . (-name "BAD" -type f) -o (-type d).

Most users prefer something that looks like:

find . -name  "*BAD*" -type f -o -name "*BAD*" -type d

which computes as

find . (-name  "*BAD*" -type f) -o (-name "*BAD*" -type d)

-name "BAD" searches for names that contain the string string anywhere in them

For simplicity:

find . -maxdepth 2 -o -name "*BAD*"