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search for files or directories, then show a sorted list of just the unique directories where the matches occur

Terminal - search for files or directories, then show a sorted list of just the unique directories where the matches occur
for i in $(locate your_search_phrase); do dirname $i; done | sort | uniq
2009-02-05 14:03:20
User: realbrewer
Functions: dirname locate sort
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search for files or directories, then show a sorted list of just the unique directories where the matches occur

Ever use 'locate' to find a common phrase in a filename or directory name? Often you'll get a huge list of matches, many of which are redundant, and typically the results are not sorted. This command will 'locate' your search phrase, then show you a sorted list of just the relevant directories, with no duplications. So, for example, maybe you have installed several versions of the java jre and you want to track down every directory where files matching "java" might exist. Well, a 'locate java' is likely to return a huge list with many repeated directories since many files in one directory could contain the phrase "java". This command will whittle down the results to a minimal list of unique directory names where your search phrase finds a match.

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