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Is there a way to get absolute path of a file that is being searched?

For example:

find .. -name "filename"

It gives me results like ../filename but I want the full path.

What I need is to find in the parent directory and its children, for a specific file, that I will use in another script later.

Thanks

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    Similar question on SO. Commented Apr 9, 2014 at 17:17
  • find $(readlink -f ..) -name "filename". Use readlink in the file path for ease. Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 6:50
  • the comment here using readlink is the best answer by far, but I'll just add that (1) quotes are important in case there's a space in the dir name, and (2) realpath is apparently preferred according to man readlink(1): eg: find "$(realpath ..)" -name "filename" (nb: find ... -printf ... has no option for this, and find ... - exec readlink -f {} \; is suuuuper slow) Commented Jan 20, 2024 at 2:50

10 Answers 10

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You can use bash's Tilde Expansion to get the absolute path of the current working directory, this way find prints the absolute path for the results as well:

find ~+ -type f -name "filename"

If executed in ~/Desktop, this is expanded to

find /home/yourusername/Desktop -type f -name "filename"

and prints results like:

/home/yourusername/Desktop/filename

If you want to use this approach with the current working directory’s parent directory you need to cd before calling find:

cd .. && find ~+ -type f -name "filename"
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41

Try something like:

find "$(cd ..; pwd)" -name "filename"
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  • Thanks, I was just testing $(cd ..; pwd). Here it works OK, but if I do it alone in a Terminal, I can't get the parent dir... I get "Bash: <dir>: Is a directory. And if I do $(cd ..; echo "something") I get "something: not a command" Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 15:52
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    Do you mean like a separate command? Then you would need to leave out the dollar sign: (cd ..; pwd) Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 15:53
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    Yes ( ... ) means execute in a subshell, the output gets written to stdout. $( ... ) stands for "command substitution". The latter can be used as if it were a variable expansion. Commented Apr 7, 2014 at 16:03
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    @Scrutinizer - I think you misunderstand how find works. If you use the full path in your search, you get the full path in your output. find /home/your_user -name foo. As OP is using "../" , hard to guess the full path to give in an answer. Commented Apr 8, 2014 at 13:02
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    @JorgeeFG $(builtin cd ..; pwd) will canel functions, aliases. Commented Oct 16, 2019 at 17:37
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The simplest way is

find "$(pwd -P)" -name "filename"
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    Yes! Or find `pwd -P` -name "filename" Commented Jul 24, 2019 at 0:35
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    this will find files in the current directory not from parent. Commented Oct 16, 2019 at 18:21
  • @ApollyssupportsMonica nice! but if there are spaces in the path - you need to wrap it in the quotes, so find "pwd -P" -name "..." is more universal :-) Commented Sep 9, 2023 at 19:15
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Try using the -exec option of find:

find .. -name "filename" -exec readlink -f {} \;

Note: readlink prints the value of a symbolic link or canonical file name.

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    this will call readlink on every file so it will be very ineffective. Commented Oct 16, 2019 at 18:20
  • I like the simplicity of this solution but I found xargs to be much faster.............................................. find .. -name "filename" | xargs readlink -f Commented Nov 13, 2020 at 16:39
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This worked for me, but will only return the first occurrence.

realpath $(find . -type f -name filename -print -quit)

To get full paths for all occurrences (as suggested by Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy)

find . -type f -name filename -print0 | xargs -0 realpath
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  • Previous comment removed, +1, good job @Wyrmwood Commented Oct 16, 2019 at 20:51
  • Exactly what I needed (just the first occurrence and to print the full path including the filename in the output. Thank you Sir Commented Apr 3, 2020 at 18:09
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    this doesn't work for files with whitespaces Commented May 21, 2020 at 11:19
  • @peixotorms -print0 does the trick, and I corrected the answer. Commented Mar 20, 2022 at 17:37
  • xargs 0 is a feature I have used recently for values with embedded single quotes, Nice@DawnSong Commented Mar 21, 2022 at 16:54
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Try this way:

find $PWD -name "filename"
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  • The question has .., not .. Commented Jan 9, 2022 at 12:08
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Unless I totally misunderstand, it is as simple as this:

find $(realpath .) -name 'river.jpg'

By specifying the full real path as a start, find will implicitly output this full path as a search result.

The bash command realpath converts the current (or any other directory as ./images) into its real path). the $(realpath .) converts the output to a variable, as if it was typed manually, e.g. /home/myusername

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Try with -printf. This also works with files with blank spaces.

find .. -name "filename" -printf $PWD/"%f\n"

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Also using PWD can show you the full directory. Pwd will show you all your directorys you are in like the expanding of filename. Hope this helped.

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Removing last directory component with parameter Expansion.

find "${PWD%/*}" -name 'filename'

An example of how you can use mapfile to save output from find to an indexed array for later use.

mapfile -t -d '' < <(find ${PWD%/*} -name 'filename' -print0)

(if no array name is specified, MAPFILE will be the default array name).

for i in "${MAPFILE[@]}"; do echo "$((n++)) $i" done
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