Lib.rs

A highly-opinionated simplified Find command made with Rust.
By default it searches a file/folder in the working directory and divides the result between exact matches and ones that only contain the query.
Results will be sorted alphabetically.

For example, hunt SomeFile / will search "SomeFile" from the root directory, and the output could be:

Contains:
/SomeFileIsHere
/home/lyon/Downloads/abcdefgSomeFileeee
/mnt/Files/--SomeFile--

Exact:
/home/lyon/SomeFile

Check the Benchmarks for a comparison with other tools.

Usage

hunt [OPTIONS] [NAME] [SEARCH_IN_DIRS]...

By default, searches are case-insensitive, unless <NAME> contains an uppercase letter or the -C flag is set.

Options

-c, --canonicalize
               If enabled, all paths will be canonicalized.
-C, --case-sensitive
               If enabled, the search will be case-sensitive

               Note that case-sensitivity will be activated automatically when the search query
               contains an uppercase letter.

-e, --exact    Only search for exactly matching occurrences, any file only 
               containing the query will be skipped
        
                e.g. if query is "SomeFile", "I'mSomeFile" will be skipped, 
                as its name contains more letters than the search

-f, --first    Stop when first occurrence is found

-H, --hidden   If enabled, it searches inside hidden and ignored directories.

               The list of ignored directories is:
               "/proc", "/root", "/boot", "/dev", "/lib", "/lib64", 
               "/lost+found", "/run", "/sbin", "/sys", "/tmp", "/var/tmp",
               "/var/lib", "/var/log", "/var/db", "/var/cache", 
               "/etc/pacman.d", "/etc/sudoers.d" and "/etc/audit"

-i, --ignore <IGNORE_DIRS>
               Search ignores this directories. The format is:
               -i dir1,dir2,dir3,... (without spaces)

-S, --starts <STARTS_WITH> 
               Only files that start with this will be found
    
-E, --ends   <ENDS_WITH>
               Only files that end with this will be found

-t, --type   <FILE_TYPE>
               Specifies the type of the file
               'f' -> file
               'd' -> directory

-v, --verbose  Print verbose output
               It'll show all errors found: e.g. "Could not read /proc/81261/map_files"

-s, --simple   Prints without formatting (without "Contains:" and "Exact:")
               Useful for pairing it with other commands like xargs

-ss            Same as -s, but without sorting the output


-h  --help     Print help information

If the --first flag is set, the order in which the file will be searched is [current_dir, home_dir, root].
If you're already in one of these directories, "current_dir" will be skipped.

If the --hidden flag is not set, hidden files/directories will be skipped, as well as: /proc, /root, /boot, /dev, /lib, /lib64, /lost+found, /run, /sbin, /sys, /tmp, /var/tmp, /var/lib, /var/log, /var/db, /var/cache, /etc/pacman.d, /etc/sudoers.d and /etc/audit

Args

<NAME>  Name of the file/folder to search
        By default, searches are case-insensitive, unless the query contains an uppercase letter.

<LIMIT_TO_DIRS>...
        Directories where you want to search
        If provided, hunt will only search there
        
        These directories are treated independently, so if one is nested into another the
        search will be done two times:  
        
        e.g. "hunt somefile /home/user /home/user/downloads" will search in the home
        directory, and because /home/user/downloads is inside it, /downloads will be
        traversed two times

Examples

• Search for a specific file on the whole system (hunt will stop once found)

    hunt -f -e SomeFile
  

• Search for files containing "SomeFile"

    hunt SomeFile
  

• Search file in the home directory

    hunt -e SomeFile ~/
  

• Search file in the downloads and pictures directories

    hunt -e SomeFile ~/downloads ~/pictures
  

• Search all files that end with ".exe"

    hunt --ends .exe
  

• Search all files that end with ".exe" in the wine directory

    hunt --ends .exe ~/.wine
  

• Search all files that start with "." (all hidden files)

    hunt --starts .
  

• Search all files that end with ".exe", start with "M" and contain "wind" in the wine directory

    hunt --starts=M --ends=.exe wind ~/.wine
  

• Search a directory named "folder"

    hunt -t=d folder
  

• Search a file named "notfolder"

    hunt -t=f notfolder
  

• Remove all files named "SomeFile"

    hunt -s -e SomeFile | xargs rm -r
  

Why I made it?

I found I used the find command just to search one file, so I wanted a simpler and faster option.

Hunt is multithreaded, so it's a lot faster than find, and more reliable than locate (recent files cannot be found with it).

Installation

First check that you have Rust installed, then run

cargo install hunt

Benchmarks

Let's compare Hunt with some of the most used tools: the GNU locate and find and the very popular also written in rust, fd.

For benchmarking I'm using hyperfine, a tool developed by the fd dev.
These are done in a system with approximately 2,762,223 files, with a network drive and an external one.
Results on other systems may vary, so take this comparisons as a guide.

If you want to reproduce the benchmarks, you can do so by running the benchmarks.sh file from this repository.

Searching file in ~/

Find first occurrence of a heavily nested file in a hidden folder from the home directory. File is located in /home/user/.wine/drive_c/users/user/AppData/Local/mygame/User Data/Crashpad/reports/SomeFile.

Benchmark 1: hunt --hidden --first --exact SomeFile ~/
  Time (mean ± σ):     180.2 ms ±   7.4 ms    [User: 406.6 ms, System: 1135.9 ms]
  Range (min … max):   167.2 ms … 198.5 ms    16 runs
 
Benchmark 2: fd --hidden --no-ignore --glob --color=never --max-results=1 SomeFile ~/
  Time (mean ± σ):     913.6 ms ±  52.5 ms    [User: 2584.8 ms, System: 4628.6 ms]
  Range (min … max):   858.6 ms … 1018.6 ms    10 runs
 
Benchmark 3: find ~/ -name SomeFile -print -quit 2>/dev/null
  Time (mean ± σ):      2.219 s ±  0.071 s    [User: 0.587 s, System: 0.988 s]
  Range (min … max):    2.160 s …  2.395 s    10 runs
 
Benchmark 4: locate -n 1 -A SomeFile
  Time (mean ± σ):      1.244 s ±  0.015 s    [User: 1.231 s, System: 0.010 s]
  Range (min … max):    1.231 s …  1.281 s    10 runs
 
Summary
  'hunt --hidden --first --exact SomeFile ~/' ran
    5.07 ± 0.36 times faster than 'fd --hidden --no-ignore --glob --color=never --max-results=1 SomeFile ~/'
    6.90 ± 0.30 times faster than 'locate -n 1 -A SomeFile'
   12.31 ± 0.64 times faster than 'find ~/ -name SomeFile -print -quit 2>/dev/null'

Hunt

--hidden, search all files (it normally ignores hidden files and directories in the Ignore List).
--first, stop when first occurrence is found.
--exact, only search for files/folders named "SomeFile", names that only contain the pattern will be skipped.

Searching all files that contain "SomeFile"

Find all occurrences of "SomeFile" from the root directory (worst case scenario, checking all files in the system).

The occurrences in question are:

/home/lyon/Downloads/abcdefgSomeFileeee
/SomeFileIsHere
/mnt/Files/--SomeFile--
/home/lyon/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Internet Explorer/SomeFile

For this benchmark I'll skip Locate. It's obviously faster because it doesn't traverse all the filesystem, as it is backed up by a database.
It must be noted though that the file in /mnt/Files was not found, as the database does not keep record of files in other drives.
For the curious, it scored a time of 486.8 ms, only 1.32 times faster than Hunt.

Hunt

Benchmark 1: hunt -h SomeFile /
  Time (mean ± σ):     633.6 ms ±  25.1 ms    [User: 2876.7 ms, System: 2507.5 ms]
  Range (min … max):   589.4 ms … 671.2 ms    10 runs

Fd

Benchmark 2: fd -HI -c never SomeFile /
  Time (mean ± σ):      1.452 s ±  0.014 s    [User: 4.116 s, System: 8.693 s]
  Range (min … max):    1.431 s …  1.474 s    10 runs

Find

Benchmark 3: find / -name "*SomeFile*"
  Time (mean ± σ):      3.473 s ±  0.144 s    [User: 1.234 s, System: 1.602 s]
  Range (min … max):    3.374 s …  3.874 s    10 runs

Summary

'hunt -h SomeFile /' ran
  2.29 ± 0.09 times faster than 'fd -HI -c never SomeFile /'
  5.48 ± 0.31 times faster than 'find / -name "*SomeFile*"'

Conclusion

Hunt is faster than other alternatives if you don't need a lot of features (like regex).
Think of it as a simple "where did I put that file?" solution.