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!

Iain · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-06 11:38:11Z

up vote 13 down vote accepted

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)"

edited Sep 6 '11 at 11:38

answered Sep 6 '11 at 10:52

Iain♦
51.9k543100

	`dirname`, not `basename`. – quanta Sep 6 '11 at 10:57
	thanks Iain, but now i'm getting "usage: dirname path". – OckhamsRazor Sep 6 '11 at 11:21
	adding quotations solves it. however, your solution does not work for directories whose names have spaces in them. do you know how that could be done? thanks! – OckhamsRazor Sep 6 '11 at 11:28
	Put quotes around the subshell `"$( find ...)"` – Iain♦ Sep 6 '11 at 11:39
	awesome, well done! – OckhamsRazor Sep 6 '11 at 11:50

quanta · Answer 2 · 2011-09-06 16:57:03Z

up vote 8 down vote

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))

edited Sep 6 '11 at 16:57

answered Sep 6 '11 at 11:03

quanta
26k22681

oooh - -quit I like that – Iain♦ Sep 6 '11 at 11:11

2 Answers