what is the difference between locate and find ?

[Matt Morgan]

On 11/8/05, Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org> 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 at wa html]# locate abc.pl
> > [root at wa html]# find / -name abc.pl -print
> > find: /proc/21829/fd: No such file or directory
> > /usr/local/abc/abc.pl
> > [root at 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.