Help in finding files (.vimrc) in Mac

Question

I've made a mistake of moving my .vimrc file from my home directory and now I don't know how I'm able to locate it. I'm still new to Mac and navigating and finding files seems so foreign to me.

Instead of making another copy of my .vimrc file using 'cp' command in Terminal, I've dumbly issued the 'mv' (move) command. This is the command I've issued in my home (~) directory:

mv ~/.vimrc .old_vimrc

Now I can't find my original .vimrc file and can't even locate the '.old_vimrc' file.

Any idea where I can find it? I've wasted hours figuring it out and to no avail.

I'm trying to understand the 'mv' command I've issued above? Did it renamed the ".vimrc" file to ".old_vimrc"? Is that it?

Answer 1

If you still have the command in your history, you could run history | grep .vimrc.

• mdfind -name .vimrc: fast, includes files that aren't normally shown by Spotlight, but not files that aren't indexed, like files in folders that start with a period.
• find / -name .vimrc: slow, includes all files.
• locate .vimrc: relatively fast, but doesn't include all files and relies on a database that is only rebuilt once per week by default.

You could also use Find Any File, which is faster than find and includes files that aren't indexed by Spotlight.