On a Mac OS X system, you can use the
mdfind command to locate
files on the system from a command line interface, e.g., from a shell prompt
that you may obtain by running the Terminal program, which is located
in Applications/Utilities. You can specify the name of the
file using the -name option.
$ mdfind -name Waterfalls.mp3 /Users/jdoe/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Bob Weir/Relax With Soothing Waterfalls/01 Soothing Waterfalls.mp3 /Users/jdoe/Downloads/Waterfalls.mp3
You can specify just part of the file name and the search is not case specific, i.e., "waterfall" and "Waterfall" are deemed identical.
$ mdfind -name waterfall /Users/jdoe/Downloads/Waterfalls.mp3 /Users/jdoe/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Bob Weir/Relax With Soothing Waterfalls/01 Soothing Waterfalls.mp3 /Users/jdoe/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Bob Weir/Relax With Soothing Waterfalls /Library/Desktop Pictures/Eagle & Waterfall.jpg
As shown in the above example, directories whose names contain the string on which you are performing the search, i.e., "waterfall" in the above case, will also be returned.
If you just want a count of files and directories containing a
particular string, such as "waterfall" in the name, you can add the
-count parameter.
$ mdfind -count -name waterfall 4
If you want to limit the search to a particular directory you can use
the -onlyin parameter.
$ mdfind -name waterfall -onlyin "/Library/Desktop Pictures/" /Library/Desktop Pictures/Eagle & Waterfall.jpg
