You can use the find command to find folders with the -type d parameter. Here are a few examples:

#Search Root ( / ) folder for a folder called www



nits@excalibur:~$ sudo find / -name www -type d

/media/6E5E0E255E0DE6A5/cygwin/srv/www

/media/6E5E0E255E0DE6A5/cygwin/usr/share/doc/ImageMagick-6.4.0.6/www

/media/6E5E0E255E0DE6A5/cygwin/usr/share/doc/GraphicsMagick/www

/media/6E5E0E255E0DE6A5/cygwin/var/www

/media/6E5E0E255E0DE6A5/wamp/www



#Search current folder for a folder which start either Capital/lower-case M



nits@excalibur:~$ find . -iname m* -type d

./.local/share/telepathy/mission-control

./.config/menus

./.mozilla/firefox/vwfuj46p.default/minidumps

./.cache/indicators/messages

./.cache/chromium/Default/Media Cache

./Music

./.macromedia/Flash_Player/macromedia.com

./.jedit/macros

./.jedit/modes

./.gconf/apps/metacity

In the above examples, you would have noticed that only the directories with no subdirectories in them are listed. You can use mindepth/maxdepth to set the depth of the level that needs to be traversed.

#Search current directory for directories starting with either capital/lower-case M but only are present in the current directory



nits@excalibur:~$ find . -maxdepth 1 -iname m* -type d

./Music



# Traverse two levels (current level and one level under) in the current directory for directories starting with either capital/lower-case M:



nits@excalibur:~$ find . -maxdepth 2 -iname m* -type d

./.config/menus

./Music

./.jedit/macros

./.jedit/modes

There are a whole load of different options to search directories and files as well using find, you can look through the man-page accessible by man find for all the options and how to use it. Also although find is slower than locate it doesn't require updatedb to update a DB to search through because the search is performed real-time.