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I have a bash script /var/www/scripts/process_sounds.sh that uses the command:

find /var/www/unprocessed_sounds/ * -type f

It's supposed to find all the files in the unprocessed_sounds directory, which it does, but it also find all the files in the scripts directory (and then processes them like sound files, which is not what I want).

Why would find return things in the current directory?

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    Incidentally, if you actually wanted a wildcard match for something, you could do -name '*', but it only would make sense if it were something other than *.
    – Random832
    Nov 3, 2012 at 22:45

3 Answers 3

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You are writing the command in the wrong way. To search for file in /var/www/unprocessed_sounds/ directory, you should just write like this

find /var/www/unprocessed_sounds/ -type f

Writing like find /var/www/unprocessed_sounds/ * -type f will search for file in /var/www/unprocessed_sounds/ and * which means all directories in current directory also.

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you have a space in your command

find /var/www/unprocessed_sounds/ * -type f

find is interpreting that you want to look for all files in /var/www/unprocessed_sounds/ AND ./* take the star away (as find will dig into the directory anyway)

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If you only want to process the files in the /var/www/unprocessed_sounds/ directory, then you don't need to use the * in there.

Try to only use:

find /var/www/unprocessed_sounds/ -type f
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