How to do a simple file search in cmd

Question

I want to quickly search for a file given its name or part of its name  from the windows command line  not power shell   This is similar to opening explorer and using the search box at the top    Note  dir can search based on a string template but it will not search in the subdirectories    Note2  findstr can be used to search for a token inside files and has a recursivity flag  it s funny that a more complex find can be easily discovered

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dir   txt  s  p will give more detailed information

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dir  s  foo  searches in current folder and sub folders  It finds directories as well as files  where  s means documentation     s    Lists every occurrence of the specified file name within the specified directory and all subdirectories

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You can search in windows by DOS and explorer GUI   DOS   1  DIR  2  ICACLS  searches for files and folders to set ACL on them   3  cacls                                                       2  example   icacls c  ntoskrnl     grant system  f   c  t  then use PMON from sysinternals to monitor what folders are denied accesss  The result contains   access path contains your drive  process name is explorer exe  those were filters youu must apply

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dir  b s   txt     searches for all txt file in the directory tree  Before using it just change the directory to root using  cd    you can also export the list to a text file  using  dir  b s   exe  gt  gt  filelist txt   and search within using  type filelist txt   find  n  filename    EDIT 1  Although this dir command  works since the old dos days but Win7 added something new called Where   where  r c  Windows   exe   dll   will search for exe  amp  dll in the drive c  Windows as suggested by  SPottuit you can also copy the output to the clipboard with  where  r c  Windows   exe  clip   just wait for the prompt to return and don t copy anything until then   EDIT 2  If you are searching recursively and the output is big you can always use more to enable paging  it will show -- More -- at the bottom and will scroll to the next page once you press SPACE or moves line by line on pressing ENTER  where  r c  Windows   exe  more   For more help try  where

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Problem with DIR is that it will return wrong answers  If you are looking for DOC in a folder by using DIR   DOC it will also give you the DOCX  Searching for   HTM will also give the HTML and so on

[windows] How to do a simple file search in cmd

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