vim as a builtin find command (:help find) but only open the first found file. However you can use this amazing plugin : FuzzyFinder which does everything you want and even more
There is a find command. If you add ** (see :help starstar) to your 'path' then you can search recursively:
:set path
will show you your current path, add ** by doing something like
:set path+=**
then you can just type
:find myfile.txt
and it opens magically!
If you add the set command to your .vimrc it'll make sure you can do recursive search in future. It doesn't seem to search dot directories (.ssh for example)
will open test/Suite.java no matter where it is in the current directory hierarchy. This works with tab-completion so you can use [tab] to expand the wildcards before opening the file. See also the wildmode option for a way to browse through all possible extensions instead.
Another trick is to use
:r! find . -type f
to load a list of all files in the current directory into a buffer. Then you can use all the usual vim text manipulation tools to navigate/sort/trim the list, and CTRL+W gf to open the file under the cursor in a new pane.
Command-T lets you find a file very fast just by typing some letters. You can also open the file in a new tab, but it need vim compiled with ruby support.
I'd recommend ctrlp.vim. It's a very good plugin, ideal to work inside large projects. It has search by file name or full path, regexp search, automatic detection of the project root (the one with the .git|hg|svn|bzr|_darcs folder), personalized file name exclusions, and many more.
Just press <c-p> and it will open a very intuitive pane where you can search what you want:
It's possible to select and open several files at once. It also accepts additional arbitrary commands, like jump to a certain line, string occurrence or any other Vim command.
Finding files (fuzzily or otherwise) is just the very tip of the iceberg of what it can do for a developer. It has built in support for ag, git, and a myriad of other programs/utilities/vim plugins. The learning curve can be a bit steep, but i cannot imagine my life without it. User base is big, and bugs are fixed immediately.
Depending on your situation (that is, assuming the following command will find just a single file), perhaps use a command like:
:e `locate SomeUniqueFileName.java`
This will cause Vim to open, in the current tab (the e command) a file that is the result of running (in this example),
locate SomeUniqueFileName.java
Note that the magic here is the backticks around the command, which will convert the output from the shell command into text usable in the Vim command.