>>>>> Eloy A Paris writes: Eloy> I was given a text file containing one file name (no full path Eloy> name) per line. My task consists of searching the entire Eloy> filesystem and generate a list of the files that are NOT Eloy> present.
updatedb generates a database of all file names on the system. (It only runs for a few minutes for my system.) "locate foo" searches for all files names with a "foo" substring. The status code is 0 if at least one file was found, 1 otherwise. (Actually, "foo" is a shell pattern with "*" and "?" wildcards. Read the man page for details.) Does this get you closer to the solution? kai -- I wish my mouth had a backso^Hpace key.
