How can I search a file by its name and partial path?

Pass in a * wildcard to indicate a match for anything. You also need to escape the *s, e.g.:

find . -path \*content/docs/file.xml

or enclose the pattern in quotes, e.g.:

find . -path "*content/docs/file.xml"

As the man page describes it:

$ find . -name *.c -print

find: paths must precede expression

This happens because *.c has been expanded by the shell resulting in find actually receiving a command line like this:

find . -name bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c -print

That command is of course not going to work. Instead of doing things this way, you should enclose the pattern in quotes or escape the wild‐ card:

$ find . -name \*.c -print

find has a -path (or the equivalent but less portable -wholename) option too find $top_dir -wholename *string*

find /usr -path *in/abiw*

>/usr/bin/abiword

find . -type f | grep "content/docs/file.xml"

or just

locate content/docs/file.xml