Find
General Usage
Find Text Files
find ~ -name *.txt
Find empty files/folders
find ~ -type f -empty find ~ -type d -empty
Find all empty files (zero byte file)
find ~ -empty
List all the empty files only in your home directory
find . -maxdepth 1 -empty
List only the non-hidden empty files only in the current directory
find . -maxdepth 1 -empty -not -name ".*"
Find Files Using Name and Ignoring Case
find -iname "MyCProgram.c"
Find the passwd file under root and one level down
find -maxdepth 2 -name passwd
Find all directories
find ~ -type d
Find only the normal files
find . -type f
Find all the hidden files/directories
find ~ -type f -name ".*" find ~ -type d -name ".*"
Time based Sort
Created within 2 days
find ~/test -ctime -2 -print
Modified within 24 hours
find ~/test -mtime -1 -print
Find files in directory and sub-directories updated within 60 min
find . -mmin -60
Finds all the files updated within 1 day
find / -mtime -1
search files which are modified between last 10 to 20 days
find / -mtime -20 -mtime +10
Find files which got accessed within 60 minutes
find / -amin -60 find / -atime -1
Search files which are accessed between last 10 to 20 days
find /tmp -atime -20 -atime +10
Find files which changed within 60 minutes
find . -cmin -60 find / -ctime -1
Displays all files which are modified after the /etc/passwd files was modified
find -newer /etc/passwd
Displays all files which are accessed after modifying /etc/hosts
find -anewer /etc/hosts
Displays all files whose status got changed after modifying the /etc/fstab
find -cnewer /etc/fstab
Long list the files which are edited within the last 1 hour
find -mmin -60 -exec ls -l {} \;
Restricting the find output only to files
find /etc/sysconfig -amin -30 -type f
Do not display hidden files in find output
find . -mmin -15 \( ! -regex ".*/\..*" \)
Delete Files
Delete empty folders
find ~/test -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \; find ~/ -type d -empty -delete
Find and Delete .ini & .db files find ~/test -name *.ini find ~/test -name *.ini -delete find ~/test -name *.db find ~/test -name *.db -delete
Replaces space in all the *.mp3 files with _
find . -type f -iname “*.mp3″ -exec rename “s/ /_/g” {} \;
Delete 100 days old file
find * -mtime +100 -exec rm {} \;
Move Specific files to another location
find ./* -name *.jpg -exec mv {} ~/Public/ \;
Size based Sort
Find files that matches the exact given size
find ~ -size 100M
Find files bigger than the given size
find ~ -size +100M
Find files smaller than the given size
find ~ -size -100M
Search files whose size is greater than 10MB and less than 20MB
find /tmp -size +10M -size -20M
Remove the files named a.out frequently
alias rmao="find . -iname a.out -exec rm {} \;" $ rmao
Remove the core files generated by c program
alias rmc="find . -iname core -exec rm {} \;" $ rmc
Removes *.zip files that are over 100M
find / -type f -name *.zip -size +100M -exec rm -i {} \;
Exec Commands
- Perform Any Operation on Files Found From Find Command
find <CONDITION to Find files> -exec <OPERATION> \;
Execute any Unix shell command/custom shell script/command on find command output files:
rm : remove the files found by find command. mv : rename the files found. ls -l : get details of the find command output files. md5sum : find command output files wc : count the total number of words on find command output files.
Finding the Top 5 Big Files
find . -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n -r | head -5
Finding the Top 5 Small Files
find . -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n | head -5
List the smaller files other than the ZERO byte files
find . -not -empty -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n | head -5
Find files which has read permission to group
find . -perm -g=r -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
Find files which has read permission only to group
find . -perm g=r -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
Executing Commands on the Files Found by the Find Command
find -iname "MyCProgram.c" -exec md5sum {} \;
Advanced Options
List and Export only files recursively without Directory name
find . -maxdepth 10 -type f -printf '%f\n' > fileslist.txt
If you don’t want to see the errors and would like to redirect it to null
find -name "*.txt" 2>>/dev/null
Search all jpg images in the system and archive it
find ~/test -name *.jpg -type f -print | xargs tar -cvzf images.tar.gz
Inverting the match
find -maxdepth 1 -not -iname "MyCProgram.c"
Find files of specific Extensions:
find . -name '*.jpg' -name '*.gif' -name '*.png' -name '*.jpeg' -name '*.JPG' -name '*.bmp' -name '*.html' -name '*.htm'
Find all files except for specific Extensions:
find . ! -name '*.jpg' ! -name '*.gif' ! -name '*.png' ! -name '*.jpeg' ! -name '*.JPG' ! -name '*.bmp' ! -name '*.html' ! -name '*.htm'
Searching all files with 777 permission
find / -type f -perm 0777
Search world readable files - everyone has only read access on that file (444 or -r–r–r– permission); numeric as well as u-g-o (user, group, others) format can be used with -perm switch
find / -type f -perm 444 find / -type f -perm /u=r -perm /g=r -perm /o=r
If you are suspecting some user is spamming files on server, you can search files with his ownership:
find / -type f -user aman
Similarly, files owned by specific group can be searched
find / -type f -group dba
- References
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