fd
fd is a simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to
find.
While it does not seek to mirror all of find's powerful functionality, it provides sensible
(opinionated) defaults for 80% of the use cases.
Features
- Convenient syntax:
fd PATTERNinstead offind -iname '*PATTERN*'. - Colorized terminal output (similar to ls).
- It's fast (see benchmarks below).
- Smart case: the search is case-insensitive by default. It switches to
case-sensitive if the pattern contains an uppercase
character*. - Ignores hidden directories and files, by default.
- Ignores patterns from your
.gitignore, by default. - Regular expressions.
- Unicode-awareness.
- The command name is 50% shorter* than
find:-). - Parallel command execution with a syntax similar to GNU Parallel.
Demo
Benchmark
Let's search my home folder for files that end in [0-9].jpg. It contains ~190.000
subdirectories and about a million files. For averaging and statistical analysis, I'm using
hyperfine. The following benchmarks are performed
with a "warm"/pre-filled disk-cache (results for a "cold" disk-cache show the same trends).
Let's start with find:
Benchmark #1: find ~ -iregex '.*[0-9]\.jpg$'
Time (mean ± σ): 7.236 s ± 0.090 s
Range (min … max): 7.133 s … 7.385 s
find is much faster if it does not need to perform a regular-expression search:
Benchmark #2: find ~ -iname '*[0-9].jpg'
Time (mean ± σ): 3.914 s ± 0.027 s
Range (min … max): 3.876 s … 3.964 s
Now let's try the same for fd. Note that fd always performs a regular expression
search. The options --hidden and --no-ignore are needed for a fair comparison,
otherwise fd does not have to traverse hidden folders and ignored paths (see below):
Benchmark #3: fd -HI '.*[0-9]\.jpg$' ~
Time (mean ± σ): 811.6 ms ± 26.9 ms
Range (min … max): 786.0 ms … 870.7 ms
For this particular example, fd is approximately nine times faster than find -iregex
and about five times faster than find -iname. By the way, both tools found the exact
same 20880 files :smile:.
Finally, let's run fd without --hidden and --no-ignore (this can lead to different
search results, of course). If fd does not have to traverse the hidden and git-ignored
folders, it is almost an order of magnitude faster:
Benchmark #4: fd '[0-9]\.jpg$' ~
Time (mean ± σ): 123.7 ms ± 6.0 ms
Range (min … max): 118.8 ms … 140.0 ms
Note: This is one particular benchmark on one particular machine. While I have
performed quite a lot of different tests (and found consistent results), things might
be different for you! I encourage everyone to try it out on their own. See
this repository for all necessary scripts.
Concerning fd's speed, the main credit goes to the regex and ignore crates that are also used
in ripgrep (check it out!).
Colorized output
fd can colorize files by extension, just like ls. In order for this to work, the environment
variable LS_COLORS has to be set. Typically, the value
of this variable is set by the dircolors command which provides a convenient configuration format
to define colors for different file formats.
On most distributions, LS_COLORS should be set already. If you are looking for alternative, more
complete (and more colorful) variants, see
here or
here.
Parallel command execution
If the -x/--exec option is specified alongside a command template, a job pool will be created
for executing commands in parallel for each discovered path as the input. The syntax for generating
commands is similar to that of GNU Parallel:
{}: A placeholder token that will be replaced with the path of the search result
(documents/images/party.jpg).{.}: Like{}, but without the file extension (documents/images/party).{/}: A placeholder that will be replaced by the basename of the search result (party.jpg).{//}: Uses the parent of the discovered path (documents/images).{/.}: Uses the basename, with the extension removed (party).
# Convert all jpg files to png files:
fd -e jpg -x convert {} {.}.png
# Unpack all zip files (if no placeholder is given, the path is appended):
fd -e zip -x unzip
# Convert all flac files into opus files:
fd -e flac -x ffmpeg -i {} -c:a libopus {.}.opus
# Count the number of lines in Rust files (the command template can be terminated with ';'):
fd -x wc -l \; -e rs
The number of threads used for command execution can be set with the --threads/-j option.
Installation
On Ubuntu
... and other Debian-based Linux distributions.
If you run Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) or newer, you can install the
officially maintained package:
sudo apt install fd-find
Note that the binary is called fdfind as the binary name fd is already used by another package.
It is recommended that you add an alias fd=fdfind to your shells initialization file, in order to
use fd in the same way as in this documentation.
If you use an older version of Ubuntu, you can download the latest .deb package from the
release page and install it via:
sudo dpkg -i fd_7.4.0_amd64.deb # adapt version number and architecture
On Debian
If you run Debian Buster or newer, you can install the
officially maintained Debian package:
sudo apt-get install fd-find
Note that the binary is called fdfind as the binary name fd is already used by another package.
It is recommended that you add an alias fd=fdfind to your shells initialization file, in order to
use fd in the same way as in this documentation.
On Fedora
Starting with Fedora 28, you can install fd from the official package sources:
dnf install fd-find
For older versions, you can use this Fedora copr to install fd:
dnf copr enable keefle/fd
dnf install fd
On Alpine Linux
You can install the fd package
from the official sources, provided you have the appropriate repository enabled:
apk add fd
On Arch Linux
You can install the fd package from the official repos:
pacman -S fd
On Gentoo Linux
You can use the fd ebuild from the official repo:
emerge -av fd
On openSUSE Linux
You can install the fd package from the official repo:
zypper in fd
On Void Linux
You can install fd via xbps-install:
xbps-install -S fd
On macOS
You can install fd with Homebrew:
brew install fd
… or with MacPorts:
sudo port install fd
On Windows
You can download pre-built binaries from the release page.
Alternatively, you can install fd via Scoop:
scoop install fd
Or via Chocolatey:
choco install fd
On NixOS / via Nix
You can use the Nix package manager to install fd:
nix-env -i fd
On FreeBSD
You can install the fd-find package from the official repo:
pkg install fd-find
From NPM
On linux and macOS, you can install the fd-find package:
npm install -g fd-find
From source
With Rust's package manager cargo, you can install fd via:
cargo install fd-find
Note that rust version 1.31.0 or later is required.
From binaries
The release page includes precompiled binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows.
Development
git clone https://github.com/sharkdp/fd
# Build
cd fd
cargo build
# Run unit tests and integration tests
cargo test
# Install
cargo install
Command-line options
USAGE:
fd [FLAGS/OPTIONS] [<pattern>] [<path>...]
FLAGS:
-H, --hidden Search hidden files and directories
-I, --no-ignore Do not respect .(git, fd)ignore files
--no-ignore-vcs Do not respect .gitignore files
-s, --case-sensitive Case-sensitive search (default: smart case)
-i, --ignore-case Case-insensitive search (default: smart case)
-g, --glob Glob-based search (default: regular expression)
-F, --fixed-strings Treat the pattern as a literal string
-a, --absolute-path Show absolute instead of relative paths
-L, --follow Follow symbolic links
-p, --full-path Search full path (default: file-/dirname only)
-0, --print0 Separate results by the null character
-h, --help Prints help information
-V, --version Prints version information
OPTIONS:
-d, --max-depth <depth> Set maximum search depth (default: none)
-t, --type <filetype>... Filter by type: file (f), directory (d), symlink (l),
executable (x), empty (e)
-e, --extension <ext>... Filter by file extension
-x, --exec <cmd> Execute a command for each search result
-X, --exec-batch <cmd> Execute a command with all search results at once
-E, --exclude <pattern>... Exclude entries that match the given glob pattern
-c, --color <when> When to use colors: never, *auto*, always
-S, --size <size>... Limit results based on the size of files.
--changed-within <date, dur> Filter by file modification time (newer than)
--changed-before <date, dur> Filter by file modification time (older than)
ARGS:
<pattern> the search pattern: a regular expression unless '--glob' is used (optional)
<path>... the root directory for the filesystem search (optional)
This is the output of fd -h. To see the full set of command-line options, use fd --help which
also includes a much more detailed help text.
Tutorial
First, to get an overview of all available command line options, you can either run
fd -h for a concise help message (see above) or fd --help for a more detailed
version.
Simple search
fd is designed to find entries in your filesystem. The most basic search you can perform is to
run fd with a single argument: the search pattern. For example, assume that you want to find an
old script of yours (the name included netflix):
> fd netfl
Software/python/imdb-ratings/netflix-details.py
If called with just a single argument like this, fd searches the current directory recursively
for any entries that contain the pattern netfl.
Regular expression search
The search pattern is treated as a regular expression. Here, we search for entries that start
with x and end with rc:
> cd /etc
> fd '^x.*rc$'
X11/xinit/xinitrc
X11/xinit/xserverrc
Specifying the root directory
If we want to search a specific directory, it can be given as a second argument to fd:
> fd passwd /etc
/etc/default/passwd
/etc/pam.d/passwd
/etc/passwd
Running fd without any arguments
fd can be called with no arguments. This is very useful to get a quick overview of all entries
in the current directory, recursively (similar to ls -R):
> cd fd/tests
> fd
testenv
testenv/mod.rs
tests.rs
If you want to use this functionality to list all files in a given directory, you have to use
a catch-all pattern such as . or ^:
> fd . fd/tests/
testenv
testenv/mod.rs
tests.rs
Searching for a particular file extension
Often, we are interested in all files of a particular type. This can be done with the -e (or
--extension) option. Here, we search for all Markdown files in the fd repository:
> cd fd
> fd -e md
CONTRIBUTING.md
README.md
The -e option can be used in combination with a search pattern:
> fd -e rs mod
src/fshelper/mod.rs
src/lscolors/mod.rs
tests/testenv/mod.rs
Hidden and ignored files
By default, fd does not search hidden directories and does not show hidden files in the
search results. To disable this behavior, we can use the -H (or --hidden) option:
> fd pre-commit
> fd -H pre-commit
.git/hooks/pre-commit.sample
If we work in a directory that is a Git repository (or includes Git repositories), fd does not
search folders (and does not show files) that match one of the .gitignore patterns. To disable
this behavior, we can use the -I (or --no-ignore) option:
> fd num_cpu
> fd -I num_cpu
target/debug/deps/libnum_cpus-f5ce7ef99006aa05.rlib
To really search all files and directories, simply combine the hidden and ignore features to show
everything (-HI).
Excluding specific files or directories
Sometimes we want to ignore search results from a specific subdirectory. For example, we might
want to search all hidden files and directories (-H) but exclude all matches from .git
directories. We can use the -E (or --exclude) option for this. It takes an arbitrary glob
pattern as an argument:
> fd -H -E .git …
We can also use this to skip mounted directories:
> fd -E /mnt/external-drive …
.. or to skip certain file types:
> fd -E '*.bak' …
To make exclude-patterns like these permanent, you can create a .fdignore file. They work like
.gitignore files, but are specific to fd. For example:
> cat ~/.fdignore
/mnt/external-drive
*.bak
Note: fd also supports .ignore files that are used by other programs such as rg or ag.
Using fd with xargs or parallel
If we want to run a command on all search results, we can pipe the output to xargs:
> fd -0 -e rs, xargs -0 wc -l
Here, the -0 option tells fd to separate search results by the NULL character (instead of
newlines). In the same way, the -0 option of xargs tells it to read the input in this way.
Deleting files
You can use fd to remove all files and directories that are matched by your search pattern.
If you only want to remove files, you can use the --exec-batch/-X option to call rm. For
example, to recursively remove all .DS_Store files, run:
> fd -H '^\.DS_Store$' -tf -X rm
If you are unsure, always call fd without -X rm first. Alternatively, use rms "interactive"
option:
> fd -H '^\.DS_Store$' -tf -X rm -i
If you also want to remove a certain class of directories, you can use the same technique. You will
have to use rms --recursive/-r flag to remove directories.
Note: there are scenarios where using fd … -X rm -r can cause race conditions: if you have a
path like …/foo/bar/foo/… and want to remove all directories named foo, you can end up in a
situation where the outer foo directory is removed first, leading to (harmless) "'foo/bar/foo':
No such file or directory" errors in the rm call.
Troubleshooting
fd does not find my file!
Remember that fd ignores hidden directories and files by default. It also ignores patterns
from .gitignore files. If you want to make sure to find absolutely every possible file, always
use the options -H and -I to disable these two features:
> fd -HI …
fd doesn't seem to interpret my regex pattern correctly
A lot of special regex characters (like [], ^, $, ..) are also special characters in your
shell. If in doubt, always make sure to put single quotes around the regex pattern:
> fd '^[A-Z][0-9]+$'
If your pattern starts with a dash, you have to add -- to signal the end of command line
options. Otherwise, the pattern will be interpreted as a command-line option. Alternatively,
use a character class with a single hyphen character:
> fd -- '-pattern'
> fd '[-]pattern'
Integration with other programs
Using fd with fzf
You can use fd to generate input for the command-line fuzzy finder fzf:
export FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND='fd --type file'
export FZF_CTRL_T_COMMAND="$FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND"
Then, you can type vim <Ctrl-T> on your terminal to open fzf and search through the fd-results.
Alternatively, you might like to follow symbolic links and include hidden files (but exclude .git folders):
export FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND='fd --type file --follow --hidden --exclude .git'
You can even use fd's colored output inside fzf by setting:
export FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND="fd --type file --color=always"
export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS="--ansi"
For more details, see the Tips section of the fzf README.
Using fd with emacs
The emacs package find-file-in-project can
use fd to find files.
After installing find-file-in-project, add the line (setq ffip-use-rust-fd t) to your
~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el file.
In emacs, run M-x find-file-in-project-by-selected to find matching files. Alternatively, run
M-x find-file-in-project to list all available files in the project.
License
Copyright (c) 2017-2020 The fd developers
fd is distributed under the terms of both the MIT License and the Apache License 2.0.
See the LICENSE-APACHE and LICENSE-MIT files for license details.