find paths must precede expression How do I specify a recursive search that also finds files in the current directory

Question

I am having a hard time getting find to look for matches in the current directory as well as its subdirectories    When I run find  test c it only gives me the matches in the current directory   does not look in subdirectories   If I try find   -name  test c I would expect the same results  but instead it gives me only matches that are in a subdirectory  When there are files that should match in the working directory  it gives me  find  paths must precede expression  mytest c   What does this error mean  and how can I get the matches from both the current directory and its subdirectories

User · Answer

What s happening is that the shell is expanding   test c  into a list of files   Try escaping the asterisk as   find   -name   test c

User · Answer

I came across this question when I was trying to find multiple filenames that I could not combine into a regular expression as described in  Chris J s answer  here is what worked for me  find   -name one pdf -o -name two txt -o -name anotherone jpg   -o or -or is logical OR  See Finding Files on Gnu org for more information   I was running this on CygWin

User · Answer

In my case i was missing trailing   in path    find  var opt gitlab backups  -name   tar

User · Answer

Try putting it in quotes   find   -name   test c

User · Answer

Try putting it in quotes -- you re running into the shell s wildcard expansion  so what you re acually passing to find will look like   find   -name bobtest c cattest c snowtest c      causing the syntax error  So try this instead   find   -name   test c    Note the single quotes around your file expression -- these will stop the shell  bash  expanding your wildcards

User · Answer

From find manual   NON-BUGS              Operator precedence surprises    The command find   -name afile -o -name bfile -print will never print    afile because this is actually equivalent to find   -name afile -o       -name bfile -a -print      Remember that the precedence of -a is    higher than that of -o and when there is no operator specified    between tests  -a is assumed         paths must precede expression    error message      find   -name   c -print    find  paths must precede expression    Usage  find  -H   -L   -P   -Olevel   -D      path      expression      This happens because   c has been expanded by the shell resulting in    find actually receiving a command line like this     find   -name frcode c locate c word io c -print    That command is of course not going to work   Instead of doing things    this way  you should enclose the pattern in quotes or escape the    wildcard       find   -name    c  -print      find   -name    c -print

[linux] "find: paths must precede expression:" How do I specify a recursive search that also finds files in the current directory?

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