How to search files by directory and file name combo pattern

Question

I want to find all .xml files in all directories and subdirectories with name 'metadata' in the filesystem. Is there a way to search by pattern similar to

find . -name  */metadata/*.xml" (mixing find command and Gradle paralance)

?

Answer 1

$ find / -path "*/metadata/*" -name "*.xml"

or, shorter (since * matches past the slashes in pathnames when used with -path),

$ find / -path "*/metadata/*.xml"

Note: I'm using / as you said "in the filesystem", which I interpreted to mean "anywhere".

Alternatively, using locate (will only find files accessible to all users):

$ locate "/metadata/" | grep '\.xml$'

(This will work somewhat like the first find above)

Answer 2

What you need to realize is that the -name in 'find' is really the 'basename' Hence to get at the actual filename we can run a nested find wherein we first locate a directory whose name is 'metadata' and then look for any *.xml files under the said directory:

find . -type d -name metadata -exec sh -c '
shift $1;
while case $# in 0 ) break;; esac; do
   find "${1}/." ! -name . -prune -type f -name \*.xml
   shift
done
' 2 1 {} +

Answer 3

This is sort of sloppy, but while you are in the parent directory of your choosing you could try

grep -nr "*metadata/*xml" .