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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-12T21:05:12+00:00

I just need to search for a specific directory that can be anywhere is

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I just need to search for a specific directory that can be anywhere is there a way to run this command until the first match? Thanx!
Im now ussing 

find / -noleaf -name 'experiment' -type d | wc -l
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  1. Editorial Team

    As Rudolf Mühlbauer mentions, the -quit option tells find to quit. The man page example is that
    find /tmp/foo /tmp/bar -print -quit
    will print only /tmp/foo.

    Slightly more generally, find may be the wrong tool for what you want to do. See man locate. For example, on my system,
    locate experiment | head -3
    produces

    /usr/lib/tc/experimental.dist
/usr/share/doc/xorg/reference/experimental.html
/usr/share/doc/xorg/reference/experimental.txt

    while locate -r 'experimental..$' produces (with 6 lines snipped for brevity)

    /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-24-generic/include/config/experimental.h
 (snip)
/usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-32-generic/include/config/experimental.h

    As noted in ShpielMeister’s comment, the locate database is updated only periodically (eg, daily on Ubuntu Linux systems). When new files are a concern, say sudo updatedb, which in a second or two of work will update the database. Also see: ioflood.com blog about locate command

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