Say I have a file in some obscure directory that I want to open and edit. I don't want to do something like this...

I'd rather be able to say find this file and open it. I know there are commands like locate and find to find a file or directory, but I'm not sure whether these can (or even should) be utilized in what I'm trying to do. Basically, what is the simplest way to open a file with a program w/o specifying its exact location? (In cases where there isn't another file with the same name in the entire system, and cases where there are multiple).

if the file is unique locate should work just fine.

Beware: vim will typically create a backupfile "unique_name~" which
your locate will also find. Make sure you specify a proper filter
for the locate search, e.g.,

Cheers,
Tink

There isn't a good way. What if there are multiple files with that name? That being said if you don't mind only getting the first one you could do something like... alternately if its a file you frequently edit you could make an alias for editing it then 'vi-ugh' will edit that specific file

Thanks.

Please note the locate requires updatedb to keep track of files. locate will not find files created till updatedb has been run.

updatedb is often run from a cron at midnight or so

Also, if you are worried about possible multiple return, you can issue the '-o' option and it will open all found.
Of course if the number is large it may look a little silly as you may only have one or so lines of each file.

Please mark as SOLVED once you have a solution

I suppose you could do something like make an alias to a for loop... for a single return it would edit first instance, then next, etc... but that would suck if you were a bit ambiguous.