Find
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Name
find - search for files in a directory hierarchy
Synopsis - man page
find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression]
Frequently used options
-iname pattern
Like -name, but the match is case insensitive.
-name pattern
Base of file name (the path with the leading directories
removed) matches shell pattern pattern.
-mmin n
File's data was last modified n minutes ago.
-size n[cwbkMG]
File uses n units of space. The following suffixes can be used:
-exec command ;
Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All following
arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until
an argument consisting of `;' is encountered.
-type c
File is of type c:
b block (buffered) special
c character (unbuffered) special
d directory
p named pipe (FIFO)
f regular file
l symbolic link; this is never true if the -L option or the
-follow option is in effect, unless the symbolic link is
broken. If you want to search for symbolic links when -L
is in effect, use -xtype.
s socket
D door (Solaris)
Examples
Execution of find command can grow to very high complexity. One would be able to write a whole book in regards to number of options and arguments which can be used with find command. First we can try to search for file. I forgot where the resolv.conf file is hidden. We can attempt to find it in / directory. In this example I'm going to redirect standard error to /dev/null, feel free to run find command without it. The syntax goes like this, find (actual command) where ( / ) and what ( -name resolv.conf ):
$ find / -name resolv.conf
Lets assume that we have two files in /tmp directory: file and File. Unix system are case sensitive so file and File are two different files. touch command can help us to create those files:
$ touch /tmp/file /tmp/File
By default find command searches only for exact match:
$ find /tmp -name file
To make find command case insensitive we can use -iname option.
$ find /tmp -iname file
To find files which have been created in past 20 minutes from now we can use -mmin option:
$ find /tmp/ -mmin -20
When searching for files according their access time table below might be helpful:
| Options | Description |
| -atime -3 | All files that were last accessed less than 3 days ago |
| -atime +5 | All files that were last accessed more than 5 days ago |
| -atime 4 | All files that were last accessed exactly 4 days ago |
lets find files with certain size. In this case we search for files in /var/log with size of 8K:
$ find /var/log/ -size 8k
We can also instruct find command to execute certain commands on each file it finds. Lets change permissions for both files, file and File in /tmp directory to chmod 777.
$ find /tmp -iname file -exec chmod 777 {} \;
find can also search for certain types of files. For example if we are looking for symbolic links we can run find command with -type option:
$ find / -maxdepth 1 -type l
