When searching for .txt files that are in 2 different home directories only one shows up depending on the present working directory. Why is this?
/home/bob/1.txt
/home/alice/dir1/2.txt
pwd /tmp
[root@host tmp]#find /home -name *.txt
/home/bob/1.txt
/home/alice/dir1/2.txt
pwd /home
[root@host bob]#find /home -name *.txt
/home/bob/1.txt
Why does searching from within the bob directory only return the one file?
Why does searching from within the bob directory only return the one file?
Because when the working directory is /home/bob, the *.txt in the find command is expanded by the shell (to 1.txt) and that is what is passed to find. That is, find /home -name 1.txt. That will find the file in /home/bob, but not the differently named one in /home/alice. It would find /home/alice/1.txt if such a file existed.
On the other hand, when the pattern does not match any file (relative to the working directory) it is passed on as a literal. At least by default -- you should be careful about this, because the pattern would instead be expanded to nothing if the nullglob shell option were in effect and the find command were executed from a location where the pattern didn't match any files.
If you want to ensure that shell pathname expansion is not applied to the pattern then quote it:
find /home -name '*.txt'
or
find /home -name \*.txt
or ....