Intro

fd searches files according to name, size, type, etc. Don’t get confused with grep which searches the contents of the file.

Alias

The executable is named fdfind in some old versions, and it’s recommended to set fd as an alias.

alias fd='fdfind'

Usage

Regex is used by default

chsu@claudehsu:~/Sandbox$ fd '.*\.rs$'
RustLab/RustHello/hello.rs
RustLab/rust_hi/src/main.rs

Notice

• -i option can be used for case insensitive search.
• Files in .gitignore are by default ignored, meaning fd respects .gitignore. Use -I to include those ignored files.
• Hidden files are ignored. Use -H to include those hidden files.

Search by File Full Path

With -p option, the regex matches against the file full path, instead of the file name.

chsu@claudehsu:~/Sandbox$ fd -p -i '.*pythonlab.*\.py$'
PythonLab/Scripts/lab.py

Search by File Size

Search by file size using:

• +<size>: greater than <size>, such as +1m means greater than 1 MB
• -<size>: smaller than <size>

The command below searches .py files whose size is greater than 800KB.

chsu@claudehsu:~/Sandbox$ fd -l -S +800k '.*\.py$'
-rw-rw-r-- 2 chsu chsu 841K Nov  6  2025 ./AILab/Env/lib/python3.14/site-packages/debugpy/_vendored/pydevd/_pydevd_bundle/_debug_adapter/pydevd_schema.py
-rw-rw-r-- 2 chsu chsu 841K Jul  7 00:15 ./DuckDBLab/env/lib/python3.14/site-packages/debugpy/_vendored/pydevd/_pydevd_bundle/_debug_adapter/pydevd_schema.py

Search by File Type

-t option can be used to specify the file type

-t, --type <filetype>
        Filter the search by type:
          'f' or 'file':         regular files
          'd' or 'dir' or 'directory':    directories
          'l' or 'symlink':      symbolic links
          's' or 'socket':       socket
          'p' or 'pipe':         named pipe (FIFO)
          'b' or 'block-device': block device
          'c' or 'char-device':  character device
          'x' or 'executable':   executables
          'e' or 'empty':        empty files or directories

The command below searches the current directory to find all directories containing the letter ’t'.

chsu@claudehsu:~/Sandbox$ fd -d 1 -t d '.*t.*'
DataLab
PythonLab
RustLab

Explanation

• -d specifies the max depth, so -d 1 means to search the current directory only.
• -t d specifies to only search for directory entries.