<othercredit role="translator"><firstname>John</firstname><surname>Knight</surname><affiliation><address><email>anarchist_tomato@herzeleid.net</email></address></affiliation><contrib>Conversion to British English</contrib></othercredit>
<para>The Find Files tool is a useful method of searching for specific files on your computer, or for searching for files that match a pattern. An example of this could include searching for files of a particular type or with certain letters in the filename. You can load this utility by clicking on <guimenuitem>Find Files</guimenuitem>. This will launch &kfind;. </para>
<para>When starting &kfind;, you will see a quite simple window. Type in the name of the file you are searching in the textbox labelled <guilabel>Named:</guilabel>. Choose a folder where you want to search by typing it in the field <guilabel>Look in:</guilabel> or by clicking <guibutton>Browse...</guibutton> and press <keycap>Enter</keycap> or click <guibutton>Find</guibutton>. If <guilabel>Include subfolders</guilabel> is checked all subfolders starting from your chosen folder will be searched too. The results will be displayed in the box below. </para>
<para>You can use the following wildcards: </para>
<para>The asterisk stands for any number of missing characters (even zero), that means ⪚ searching for <userinput>marc*</userinput> may find the files <filename>marc</filename>, <filename>marc.png</filename> and <filename> marc_must_not_read_this.kwd</filename>. <userinput>mar*.kwd</userinput> may find <filename>marketplace.kwd</filename> and <filename>marc_must_not_read_this.kwd</filename>. </para>
<para>In contrast to the asterisk, the question mark stands for exactly one character, so <userinput>mar?</userinput> will find <filename>marc</filename>, but <userinput>marc?</userinput> will not find anything, as our files are called <filename>marc</filename> and <filename>marc.png</filename>. You can put as many question marks in the term as you want, it will find exactly that number of characters. </para>
<para>Type in the word or phrase the files you are searching for must contain. Note: If you do this in a large folder or checked <guilabel>Include subfolders</guilabel> in the <guilabel>Name/Location</guilabel> tab, this may take a long time. </para>
<para>This option will <emphasis>not</emphasis> work for all files listed under <guilabel>File type</guilabel>. Only the following file types are supported: <itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>Text files, ⪚ source code and <filename>README</filename> files</para></listitem>
<para>If you enable this option, &kfind; will only find files with the exact case matching, ⪚ <userinput>MARC</userinput> will only match <quote>MARC</quote>, not <quote>Marc</quote>. </para>
<listitem><para>If you have installed the &kregexpeditor; tool from the tdeutils package, you will have this additional option. Enabling it will allow you to search for a <firstterm>regexp</firstterm> or regular expression. A regexp is a way to specify conditions for your search, and they can be very complex, and equally they can be very powerful. If you are unfamiliar with regular expressions, you can choose <guilabel>Edit Regular Expression</guilabel> to open &kregexpeditor;. This tool allows you to construct your set of conditions graphically, and then generates the expression for you.</para>
<para>&kregexpeditor; is a very useful tool, and can be used from within many &kde; applications other than &kfind;. You can find more information from within its own help file.</para>
