Linux - find command

About

Search, print information and takes actions on files in a directory hierarchy.

Find use stat to extract its information

Synopsis/Syntax

find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [options] [^(-|(|)|,|!)argument....]

The expression is made up of:

• options (which affect overall operation rather than the processing of a specific file, and always return true),
• tests (which return a true or false value),
• actions (which have side effects and return a true or false value), all separated by operators.
• operators. -and is assumed where the operator is omitted. The POSIX standard specifies parentheses ‘(’, ‘)’, negation ‘!’ and the ‘and’ and ‘or’ operators (‘-a’, ‘-o’).

Filtering

Tree Level

Time

This section shows the filter based directly on the date metadata

Name

Example

Search from the current directory

find . -name 'pattern'

where:

• the point specify to search from the current directory (in or below)
• the pattern is a regexp pattern of the file name

Search by file name

Search for any file named root.sh in or below the directory /my/directory.

find /my/directory -name root.sh 

Search for any file beginning with default

find /my/directory -name 'default*'

Search for any yaml or yml file

find /my/directory \( -name "*.yaml" -o -name '*.yml' \)

The metacharacters (‘*’, ‘?’, and ‘[]’) match a ‘.’ at the start of the base name.

Listing recursively file information

find . -printf "%p %u %g %M %a %c\n"
# for sizing
echo "Relative_Path,Depth,Leading_Dir,Size_in_Byte,User_Name,Last_access_time,Last_change_time" > diskInfo.csv
find . -printf '"%p","%d","%h","%s","%u","%AY-%Am-%Ad","%CY-%Cm-%Cd"\n' >> diskInfo.csv

where:

Path:

• %p is the full qualified path
• %P is the relative path
• %d File’s depth in the directory tree; 0 means the file is a command line argument.
• %h Leading directories of file’s name (all but the last element).

Size:

• %k The amount of disk space used for this file in 1K blocks
• %s File’s size in bytes.

User/Security

• %u is the user. File’s user name, or numeric user ID if the user has no name
• %g is the group
• %M and %m are permissions (respectively in symbolic form as ls and octal form)

Time:

• %a is the File’s last access time. See %Ak to specify a date format. Example: %AY-%Am-%Ad - YYYY-MM-DD
• %c is the File’s last status change time. See %Ck to specify a date format
• %t File’s last modification time in the format returned by the C ‘ctime’ function.

Search newer file

-newer file: File was modified more recently than file. If file is a symbolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in effect, the modification time of the file it points to is always used.

touch -d '2011-12-31 10:22' foo
find . -newer foo

Loop over file

while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do

   echo "Yaml File: $file"

done < <(find . -type f \( -name "*.yaml" -o -name '*.yml' \) -print0)

Action on file with exec

Syntax:

find -exec command {} \;
find -exec command {} \+

where:

• \ in \; is an escape sequence. ; is the end of the exec command not of the find command.
• {} is a placeholder for the filename found.
• + will make only one command invocation

A -exec command must be terminated with a ;. A parameter of its own, not a shell separator. You usually need to type \; or ';' to avoid shell interpretation.

Example:

• Remove the directory named “jsp_servlet”

 find . -name "jsp_servlet" -exec rmdir {} \;

• Moving all library file

find . -type f -iname '*.so' -exec mv -t ./test/ {} \+

Documentation / Reference

• find