It really depends on how up-to-date your information has to be.

On my home storage (which has my accumulated digital junk of the past 25 or so years on slow, rotating disks), i run something like this periodically:

find /media/large -type f > /media/large/filelist.txt
find /media/large -type d > /media/large/dirlist.txt

[download]
Edit: '-type d' for directories.

Doing a "find" can take 30+ seconds, but 

cat filelist.txt | grep -i myfirstquad | grep jpg

[download]
is a sub-second operation.

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In reply to Re: smart glob of dated subfolders by cavac
in thread smart glob of dated subfolders by Anonymous Monk

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