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Re: Failure searching forfile known to exist



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On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 07:26:59AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:

[...]

> I said I had "a command line outlook", not that I was strongly
> anti-GUI.
> See, no " <dons flame-proof armour> required ;/
> Seriously though, I think the default action of Mate's "Find" menu
> option should have  been that of "locate" or "find".
> In this case "find" was more useful. There was a directory with
> improper permissions set. "locate" ignored it but "find" reported
> that it could not be searched.

To assess a tool you gotta understand how it works :)

Find recursively traverses current directory structure. Hence
its advantages:

 - precise (i.e. based on current status, not on some past
   indexing run)
 - comprehensive (nearly everything about files is queryable)

and its disadvantages

 - excruciatingly slow on big file systems

Locate queries a database of file paths which is refreshed
at some regular intervals (if you hear your computer's tummy
rumoring and catch a glimpse of "updatedb" in the process
list: this is it). Hence its advantages:

 - blazingly fast

and its disadvantages

 - deferred (last updatedb)
 - only knows about file paths

I tend to use both (sometimes even combined).

Regards
- -- t
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