Question

I am using Gnuwin32 binaries on a Windows environment.
When I want to find files of a certain type, let’s say PDF, I usually run:

find . -iname '*.pdf' -print

This works perfectly on any UNIX system.

find.exe . -iname "*.pdf" -print

But under Windows, having replaced single quotes with double-quotes, it only works when there is no pdf file in the current directory, otherwise the * gets expanded.

Worse: when there is exactly one PDF file in the current directory, it will expand, there will be no syntax error and you will get wrong results.

I have tried escaping the * with a caret, a backslash, a star itself, putting inside double quotes: nothing works for me.

Real example:

Okay, here are all my files:

C:\tmp>find . -type f
./a/1.pdf
./a/2.pdf
./a/aa/1.pdf
./b/1.pdf
./b/bb/1.pdf
./b/bb/2.pdf

Good behaviour, wildcard was not expanded

C:\tmp>find . -iname "*.pdf"
./a/1.pdf
./a/2.pdf
./a/aa/1.pdf
./b/1.pdf
./b/bb/1.pdf
./b/bb/2.pdf

C:\tmp>cd a

Caution, inconsistent behaviour, wildcard was expanded:

C:\tmp\a>find . -iname "*.pdf"
find: paths must precede expression
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression]

C:tmp\a>cd ..\b

Caution, inconsistent behaviour, wildcard was expanded :

C:\tmp\b>find . -iname "*.pdf"
./1.pdf
./bb/1.pdf

Thank you

Answer 1

I have found myself the solution to my problem.

• Gnuwin32’s find.exe is not working on recent Windows Versions (Vista, Seven) because it expands wildcards matching only the contents of the current directory.
• Similarly, an old version of find.exe from UnxUtils suffered the same bug.
• The latest find.exe from UnxUtils is working.