Finding Files on Windows

I often find myself in situations where I know a file exists but can’t find it.

On Windows, the following can be used to search for a file from the current working directory

dir /s /b | findstr [search string]

Here /s denotes a recursive search, and /b allows the full paths of the files to be printed (omit that if the full paths are not desired). The results from the dir are piped to a findstr command where a filter can be applied to find the desired file(s).

If you have grep installed (e.g., via the unix utilities) you can replace findstr with grep

dir /s /b | grep [search string]