Find Command Tutorial | How To Use Find Command

How To Use "Find" Command

Search a File Using "Find" Command

Video Tutorial For Find Command

Find File By Name

Find a file by name, "file1" is case sensitive:

find -name "file1"

Find a file by name but ignore the case:

find -iname "File1"

Find a file not having a particular pattern.

find -not -name "do_not_search_this"

or

find \! -name "do_not_search_this"

Find a file by Type:

A file can have the following type:

• f - regular file
• d - directory
• I - symbolic link
• c - character devices
• b - block devices

Find all files with ".conf" at the end:

find / -type f -name "*.conf"

Find all character devices on system:

find / -type c

Find all block devices on system:

find / -type d

Find And Filter Files By Time & Size

Filter By Size

Available size units:

• c - bytes
• k - kilobytes
• M - Megabytes
• G - Gigabytes
• b - 512-byte block

Find files which are exactly of size 1G:

find / -size 1G

Find files which are less than 1G in size:

find / -size -1G

Find files which are more than 1G in size:

find / -size +1G

Filter By Time

Available Time:

• Access Time - Last time a file was read or written to
• Modification Time - Last time when the content of file was modified
• Change Time - Last time when the file's inode metadata was changed

Find file having modification time of 1 day ago:

find / -mtime 1

Find files that were accessed less then a day ago:

find / -atime -1

Find files whose meta information was changed more than 1 days ago:

find / -cmin +1

Find files that were modified in the last 5 minutes:

find / -mmin -5

Find files that are newer than a file:

find / -newer samplefile

Find Files By Owner & Permissions

Find files owned by "ajeet" user:

find / -user ajeet

Find files owned by "ajeet" group:

find / -group ajeet

Find files having specific permission:

find / -perm 400

Find files having at least specified permission:

find / -perm -400

Find Files By Depth

Find number of files with a name:

find -name "*.conf" | wc -l

Find files upto two level (current directory and level1 directory):

find -maxdepth 2 -name "*.conf"

Find files only upto a specific directory level:

find -mindepth 5 -name "*.conf"

Find files between specific range of directory levels:

find -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 3 -name "*.conf"

Executing Commands On The Results of Find Command

Syntax:

find find_parameters -exec command_parameters {} \;

Find directories with name & specific permission and give them 700 permission:

find . -type d -perm 755 -exec chmod 700 {} \;