Find is a powerful tool for searching files and directories in a command-line interface that can also perform actions on the results.
See examples:
find . find directory
Defining type: directory, file, or symbolic link
find . -type d find . -type f find . -type l
Name pattern, wildcard, case insensitive, and user:
find . -type f -name "file.txt" find . -type f -name "file*" find . -type f -iname "file*" find . -type f -i -name "*.py*" find . -user root find . ! -user root
Find files modified less than 10 minutes ago, more than 10 minutes ago, and within a range:
find . -type f -mmin -10 find . -type f -mmin +10 find . -type f -mmin +10 -mmin -5
For days instead of minutes:
find . -type f -mtime +5
For printing the file size:
find . -type f -mmin +30 -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{print $5 " " $9}'
Based on a specific size:
find . -size +5k find . -size +5M find . -size +5G find . -empty
Based on permissions:
find . -perm 777
Performing actions on the results:
find . -exec chown user: {} +
find . -exec chown user: {} \;
find . -exec chmod 775 {} +
find . -perm 664
find . -exec rm {} +
find . -delete
find . -print
Limiting recursion depth:
find . -maxdepth 1
Counting results:
find . | wc -l find . | wc -w find . | wc -m find . | wc -c
Printing file: user, type, size, name, and last modified
find . -printf "%u %y %s %p %t \n
Searching for files that contain the “text“:
find . -type f -exec grep -H 'text' {} \; -print 2>/dev/null
Find files modified in the last 5 minutes:
find . -type f -mmin -5
Finding hidden files:
find . -type f -iname ".*" find . -type f -iname ".*" -ls
Find files by name anywhere in the directory tree:
find | grep file_name
Search, count, and calculate the total size of files sorted by extension:
find . -name '?.' -type f -printf '%b.%f\0' | awk -F . -v RS='\0' '{s[$NF] += $1; n[$NF]++} END {for (e in s) printf "%15d %4d %s\n", s[e]*512, n[e], e}' | sort -n
BONUS
Unrelated but in the same realm of finding files, rdfind can find duplicate files quickly and efficiently [Link].
sudo apt install rdfind -y rdfind ~/Documents
It will generate a report of all duplicate files found using the following strategies:
- Unique inodes
- File size
- Hash just the first few bytes
- Hash just the last few bytes
- Only then, hash the whole file
Duplicates can then be replaced with hard links or deleted.
Dry-run
rdfind -dryrun true ~/Documents
Hard-links
rdfind -makehardlinks true ~/Documents
Deletion
rdfind -deleteduplicates true ~/Documents