A computer isn't that
much different from a house or an office; unless
you're incredibly orderly, you spend a lot of time
looking for things that you've misplaced. Even if
you are incredibly orderly, you still spend some time looking for
things you need -- you just have a better idea of where to find
them. After all, librarians don't memorize the
location of every book in the stacks, but they do know how to find
any book, quickly and efficiently, using whatever tools are
available. A key to becoming a proficient user of any system, then,
is knowing how to find things.
This chapter is about how to find things. We're
excluding the find (Section 9.1) utility itself because it's
complicated and deserves a chapter of its own. We'll
concentrate on simpler ways to find files, beginning with some
different ways to use ls.
Well, okay, towards the end of the chapter we'll
touch on a few simple uses of find, but to really
get into find, take a peek at Chapter 9.
-- ML