find

general

find all below search path

find /path/to/search

find with max depth

find . -maxdepth 1

find with depth range

find . -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2

find by name

find . -name "filename"

find by name ignoring case

find . -iname "filename"

find by negated option (-not)

find . -not -name "filename"

find logical or

find . ( -name "*.pdf" -o -name "*.doc" )

find logical and

find . ( -name "*.pdf" -a -not -name "foobar.pdf" )

find by regex

find . -regex ".*/foo/.*.sh"

type/empty/hidden

find by file type

find . -type f      # files
find . -type d      # directories

find empty files

find . -type f -empty

find hidden files

find . -type f -name ".*"

user/group

find by owner

find . -user foobar

find by group

find . -group foobar

permissions

find executable files

find . -type f -executable

find by permissions

find . -perm 755

find executable bit set for others

find . -perm /a=x

find with suid set

find . -perm /u=s`
find . -perm -4000

find with sgid set

find . -perm /g=s
find . -perm -2000

find with sticky bit set

find . -perm -1000

timestamps

find modified last 24 hours ago

find . -mtime 0

find modified exactly/more than/less than 7 days ago

find . -mtime 7
find . -mtime +7
find . -mtime -7

find modified between 7 and 14 days ago

find . -mtime +7 -mtime -14

find accessed last 60 seconds

find . -amin 1

find accessed exactly/more than/less than 10 minutes ago

find . -amin 10
find . -amin +10
find . -amin -10

find accessed between 7 and 14 days ago

find . -atime +7 -atime -14

size

find with size exactly/more than/less than 50MB

find . -size 50M
find . -size +50M
find . -size -50M

execute

find and execute (one command process per file)

find . -exec command {} \;

find and execute (all files as stdin of command)

find . | xargs command

find and delete (always put deletion command at the end of the line!)

find . -type f -name "foobar" -delete
find . -type f -name "foobar" -exec rm {} \;

useful examples

find files older than 14 days and gzip them

find . -mtime +14 -exec gzip {} \;

find and delete files with access time more than a year ago

find . -type f -atime +365 -delete

find dirs and files by permissions

find . -type d -not -perm 700 -o -type f -not -perm 600

find files which were just modified

while true; do find . -type f -mtime -0; done

fix file/directory permissions

find . -type f -perm 0777 -print -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -perm 0777 -print -exec chmod 755 {} \;

size of all files bigger than 1G

find . -size +1G -exec du -sh {} \;

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last updated: Sat Aug 12 14:29:24 2023