Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Development Tools Introduction to the Terminal Common Commands Other Things to Explore

Ian Stoddard
Ian Stoddard
8,146 Points
Posted by Ian Stoddard
Ian Stoddard
8,146 Points

find command, works differently in Mac OS Terminal?

Been playing around in on my own computer to get used to these commands. One thing that's puzzling me is that an exact example from this section, the command (find -name "*.txt"), does not work for me in the Mac OS Terminal the way that it does in Workspace. It returns (find: illegal option --n). I've had no luck with this by trying to understand the man page for find, either: it appears that this ought to work, so far as I can see? Anyone know why this is different, and how to actually use it?

1 Answer

KRIS NIKOLAISEN
KRIS NIKOLAISEN
54,972 Points
KRIS NIKOLAISEN
KRIS NIKOLAISEN
54,972 Points

Not 100% sure but it appears you have to specify a directory in the Mac terminal. Ex:

find \documents -name "*.pdf"

finds all pdfs in the documents directory