How to use UNIX find to find (file1 OR file2)?

Question

In the bash command line, I want to find all files that are named foo or bar. I tried this:

find . -name "foo\|bar"

but that doesn't work. What's the right syntax?

Answer 1

You want:

find . \( -name "foo" -o -name "bar" \)

See the wikipedia page (of all places)

Answer 2

I am cheap with find, I would use this:

find ./ | grep -E 'foo|bar'

Thats just my personal pref, I like grep more than find because the syntax is easier to 'get' and once you master it there are more uses than just walking file tree.