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Fd Documentation

A comprehensive, gold-standard guide to mastering fd. fd is a modern, Rust-based alternative to the traditional find command. It is designed to be significantly faster, more intuitive for developers, and inherently aware of modern project structures (like Git repositories).

Curriculum Architecture​

This documentation is structured as a progressive curriculum, taking you from core developer workflows to advanced parallel execution.

1. Introduction​

Understand why fd was built and how its philosophy differs from POSIX find.

2. Core Syntax​

Learn the streamlined, intuitive syntax of fd.

3. Smart Case & Regex​

Master fd's default search behaviors that save keystrokes.

4. Metadata Filtering​

Filter results by file attributes.

  • Type and Extension - Fast filtering for files, directories, and specific languages.
  • Size and Time - Identifying large files and recently modified assets.

5. Git & Ignore Semantics​

Leverage fd's biggest superpower: ignoring what you don't want to see.

6. Execution & Batching​

Transform search results into automated actions.

7. Output & Formatting​

Control how data is presented to the terminal or downstream scripts.

8. Performance & Limits​

Tune fd for massive filesystems.

9. Real World Workflows​

Production-ready patterns for modern developers.

10. Troubleshooting​

Diagnose common issues and distribution quirks.

11. Cheatsheet​

High-density reference for daily operations.

Developer Mindset

If you are typing find . -type f -name "*pattern*" | grep -v node_modules, you are working too hard. fd pattern does the exact same thing, in parallel, and with colorized output.