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

{{#widget:DISQUS |id=networkm |uniqid=Find |url=https://aman.awiki.org/wiki/Find }}