The User-friendly Alternative to Find

`fd` is a super fast, Rust-based alternative to the UNIX/Linux `find` command. It does not mirror all of `find's` powerful functionality, however it does provide just enough features to cover 80% of the use cases you might run into. Features like a well thought out and convenient syntax, colorized output, smart case, regular expressions, and parallel command execution make `fd` a more than capable successor.

Tutorial

First off, to get a complete overview of all available command-line options, you can either run `fd -h` for concise help or `fd --help` for more detailed help.

Simple Search

`fd` is designed to help you easily find files and folders in your operating system's filesystem. The simplest search that you can perform is to run `fd` with a single argument, that argument being whatever it is that you're searching for. For example, let's assume that you want to find a Markdown document that has the word `services` as part of the filename:

$ fd services

If called with just a single argument, `fd` searches the current directory recursively for any files and/or directories that match your argument. The equivalent search using the built-in `Find` command looks something like this:

$ find . -name 'services'

As you can see `fd` is much simpler and requires you to type less. Getting more done with less typing is always a win in my book.

Files and Folders

You can restrict your search to files or directories by using the `-t` argument followed by the letter which represents what you want to search for. For example, to find all files in the current directory that have `services` in the filename you would use:

$ fd -tf services

And, to find all directories in the current directory that have `services` in the filename.

$ fd -td services

How about listing all documents with the `.md` extension in the current folder?

$ fd .md

administration/administration.md

development/elixir/elixir_install.md

As you can see from the output `fd` not only found and listed files from the current folder but it found files in sub-folders. Pretty neat. You can even search for hidden files using the `-H` argument.

fd -H sessions .

Specifying a directory

If we want to search a specific directory, the name of the directory can be given as a second argument to `fd`:

$ fd passwd /etc

In this example we're telling `fd` that we want to search for all instances of the word `passwd` in the `etc` directory.

Global Searches

What if you know part of the filename but not the folder? Let's say we downloaded a book on Linux Network Administration but we have no idea where it was saved. No problem.

$ fd Administration /

Wrapping Up

The `fd` utility is an excellent replacement for the `find` command and I'm sure you'll find it just as useful as I do. If interested, you can install it on your system using your local package manager (apt, dnf, brew). To learn more about the command, simply explore the rather extensive Man page.