Question

Using bash, how can I find a file with a specific name somewhere up the directory tree from the pwd?

To be more clear. I want to find a file that sits in my working directory’s root, but I don’t know where the root is, and my pwd might be anywhere below the root.

Answer 1

Find file.txt up to root

x=`pwd`
while [ "$x" != "/" ] ; do
    x=`dirname "$x"`
    find "$x" -maxdepth 1 -name file.txt
done