avoid permission denied spam when using find-command

Question

I often try to find files with following syntax:

find . -name "filetofind"

However it usually results as many rows or error reporting (Permission denied) about folders where permission is denied. Is there any other way to avoid this spam than using sudo or advanced grepping from error-output?

Answer 1

Try

find . -name "filetofind" 2>/dev/null

This will redirect stderr output stream, which is used to report all errors, including "Access denied" one, to null device.

Answer 2

You can also use the -perm and -prune predicates to avoid descending into unreadable directories (see also How do I remove "permission denied" printout statements from the find program? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange):

find . -type d ! -perm -g+r,u+r,o+r -prune -o -name "filetofind" -print

Answer 3

If you want to see other errors and you don't have files named "permission denied" then this will work "better".

find . -name "filetofind" 2>&1 | grep -v 'permission denied' 

Redirecting the output to grep with the inversion option.