fd

fd is a fast, user-friendly alternative to find, written in Rust. It ignores hidden files and .gitignore entries by default, uses colorized output, and matches regex or glob patterns against filenames without the find-style -name boilerplate.

Basic Syntax

fd <pattern> <path>

Both <pattern> and <path> are optional — bare fd lists everything under the cwd (respecting ignore rules).

Common Options

• -H — Include hidden files and directories.
• -I — Include files ignored by .gitignore.
• -t <type> — Filter by type: f (file), d (directory), l (symlink), x (executable).
• -e <ext> — Filter by file extension.
• -d <depth> — Limit search depth.
• -g — Treat <pattern> as a glob instead of regex.
• -x <cmd> — Execute <cmd> for each result (parallelized), {} is the placeholder for the path.
• -X <cmd> — Execute <cmd> once with all results appended as arguments.

Cheatsheet

fd <pattern> # search cwd, regex match on filename
fd <pattern> <path> # search a specific path
fd -e <ext> # find by extension, e.g. fd -e md
fd -t d <pattern> # directories only
fd -H -I <pattern> # include hidden and gitignored files
fd -d 2 <pattern> # limit recursion depth
 
# Execute a command per match (parallel), {} is the match path
fd <pattern> --exec <cmd> {}
 
# Danger: recursively force-delete every match, no confirmation
fd <pattern> --exec rm -Rf {}

--exec rm -Rf {} is destructive and irreversible. Always dry-run the fd <pattern> search alone first to confirm the match set before appending --exec rm -Rf {}.