Is there something like the GNU locate command in PowerShell?

Is there an equivalent of the GNU locate command in Windows 7/8?

locate can take as input a file name and gives as output all the paths where files named similarly to input are, e.g.:

locate file-with-long-name.txt
/var/www/file-with-long-name.txt

No, there is not a Windows cmd or PowerShell builtin equivalent to Linux/GNU's locate command. However, functional equivalents include cmd.exe's dir /s as described by JKarthik, and these PowerShell options:

PS> Get-ChildItem -Recurse . file-with-long-name.txt

Note the use of ., telling PowerShell where to begin the search from. You can, of course, shorten when typing at the command line:

PS> gci -r . file-with-long-name.txt

I do this a lot, so I added a function to my profile:

PS> function gcir { Get-ChildItem -Recurse . @args }
PS> gcir file-with-long-name.txt

This allows wildcards, similar to locate:

PS> gcir [a-z]ooo*.txt

See help about_Wildcards for more details. That can also be written with Where-Object like this:

PS> gcir | where { $_ -like "[a-z]ooo*.txt"}

locate has an option to match with regexes. So does PowerShell:

PS> gcir | where { $_ -match "A.*B" }

PowerShell supports full .NET Regular Expressions. See about_Regular_Expressions.

You can do other types of queries, too:

PS> gcir | where { $_.Length -gt 50M }  # find files over 50MB in size

Performance of these approaches is slow for large collections of files, as it just searches the filesystem. GNU locate uses a database. Windows now has a searchable database, called Windows Desktop Search. There is an API to WDS, which someone has wrapped with a PowerShell cmdlet, here: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/14602/Windows-Desktop-Search-Powershell-Cmdlet, allowing things like:

PS> get-wds “kind:pics datetaken:this month cameramake:pentax” 

with much better performance than Get-ChildItem, and this kind of rich query (and awkward syntax). Also, note that curly quotes work fine in PowerShell, so no need to edit that sample when copy/pasting it.

Maybe someone will find (or write) PowerShell cmdlets that allow idiomatic queries to WDS.

For a PowerShell solution, try this:

Get-ChildItem -Filter "file-with-long-name.txt" -Recurse

This returns all files that match the given name in the current directory and its subdirectories.

The -Filter parameter accepts wildcards. If the current directory contains system files that you don't have access to, add -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue to suppress errors.

For more information, see Get-Help Get-ChildItem.