Linux command to find a directory and go there

Question

I would like to find the directory which keeps a certain file and cd there. e.g.

find * -name hello.txt 

output: Documents/Projects/hello.txt

cd Documents/Projects

How do I pipe these commands? Thanks!

Answer 1

Try

cd $(dirname$(find /path -name hello.txt | head -n 1))

or

cd $(find /path -name hello.txt | head -n 1 | xargs dirname)

You'll need to provide a path to search, * in your above wouldn't work as the shell would expand it.

EDIT and if you have spaces in your filenames

cd $(find /home -name 'he llo.txt' -print0 -quit | xargs -0 dirname)

and if you have spaces in your directory names too

 cd "$(find /path -name 'hello.txt' -print0 -quit | xargs -0 dirname)"

Answer 2

Instead of finding all and head -1, just use -quit option to make find command stop after the first hello.txt file was found:

$ cd $(dirname $(find /path -name hello.txt -print -quit))

Answer 3

solution 1 find * -name hello.txt | xargs dirname

solution 2 find . -type d -print