On 11/8/05, Paul Howarth <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > M E Fieu wrote: > > Hi.. I tried to look for a file in a linux box using both locate and find , when using find I can > > find my file but locate cannot. However I found sometime locate will work when I look for other > > file. what is the difference between locate and find ? > > > > [root@wa html]# locate abc.pl > > [root@wa html]# find / -name abc.pl -print > > find: /proc/21829/fd: No such file or directory > > /usr/local/abc/abc.pl > > [root@wa html]# > > locate uses a database that is refreshed periodically, whereas find does > a search on your live filesystem. > > So locate is likely to be faster, but find will be more up to date. /usr/bin/updatedb is the command that updates the slocate database that locate uses. You can make that happen nightly with a script in /etc/cron.daily, if it's not in there already.
