bfs

NAME

bfs - breadth-first search for your files

SYNOPSIS

bfs [flags...] [paths...] [expression...]

flags (-H/-L/-P etc.), paths, and expressions may be freely mixed in any order.

DESCRIPTION

bfs is a breadth-first version of the UNIX find(1) command.

bfs supports almost every feature from every major find(1) implementation, so your existing command lines should work as-is. It also adds some features of its own, such as a more forgiving command line parser and some additional options.

Each path specified on the command line is treated as a starting path to search through. If no paths are specified, the current directory (.) is searched by default.

Like find(1), bfs interprets its arguments as a short-circuiting Boolean expression. For example,

bfs \( -name '*.txt' -or -lname '*.txt' \) -and -print

will print the all the paths that are either .txt files or symbolic links to .txt files. -and is implied between two consecutive expressions, so this is equivalent:

bfs \( -name '*.txt' -or -lname '*.txt' \) -print

Finally, -print is implied if no actions are specified, so this too is equivalent:

bfs -name '*.txt' -or -lname '*.txt'

Most options that take a numeric argument N will also accept -N or +N. -N means "less than N," and +N means "greater than N."

FLAGS

-H: Follow symbolic links on the command line, but not while searching.

-L: Follow all symbolic links.

-P: Never follow symbolic links (the default).

-E: Use extended regular expressions (same as -regextype posix-extended).

-X: Filter out files with non-xargs(1)-safe names.

-d: Search in post-order (same as -depth).

-s: Visit directory entries in sorted order. The sorting takes place within each directory separately, which makes it different from bfs ... | sort, but still provides a deterministic ordering.

-x: Don't descend into other mount points (same as -xdev).

-f PATH: Treat PATH as a path to search (useful if it begins with a dash).

-D FLAG: Turn on a debugging flag (see -D help).

-ON

Enable optimization level N (default: 3).

-O0: Disable all optimizations.

-O1: Basic logical simplifications.

-O2: All -O1 optimizations, plus dead code elimination and data flow analysis.

-O3: All -O2 optimizations, plus re-order expressions to reduce expected cost.

-O4/-Ofast: All optimizations, including aggressive optimizations that may alter the observed behavior in corner cases.

-S bfs|dfs|ids|eds

Choose the search strategy.

bfs: Breadth-first search (the default).

dfs: Depth-first search. Uses less memory than breadth-first search, but is typically slower to return relevant results.

ids: Iterative deepening search. Performs repeated depth-first searches with increasing depth limits. This gives results in the same order as breadth-first search, but with the reduced memory consumption of depth-first search. Tends to be very slow in practice, so use it only if you absolutely need breadth-first ordering, but -S bfs consumes too much memory.

eds: Exponential deepening search. A compromise between breadth- and depth-first search, which searches exponentially increasing depth ranges (e.g 0-1, 1-2, 2-4, 4-8, etc.). Provides many of the benefits of breadth-first search with depth-first's reduced memory consumption. Typically far faster than -S ids.

OPERATORS

( expression ): Parentheses are used for grouping expressions together. You'll probably have to write $ expression $ to avoid the parentheses being interpreted by the shell.

! expression

-not expression

The "not" operator: returns the negation of the truth value of the expression. You may have to write \! expression to avoid ! being interpreted by the shell.

expression expression

expression -a expression

expression -and expression

Short-circuiting "and" operator: if the left-hand expression is true, returns the right-hand expression; otherwise, returns false.

expression -o expression

expression -or expression

Short-circuiting "or" operator: if the left-hand expression is false, returns the right-hand expression; otherwise, returns true.

expression , expression: The "comma" operator: evaluates the left-hand expression but discards the result, returning the right-hand expression.

SPECIAL FORMS

-exclude expression: Exclude all paths matching the expression from the search. This is more powerful than -prune, because it applies even when the expression wouldn't otherwise be evaluated, due to -depth or -mindepth for example. Exclusions are always applied before other expressions, so it may be least confusing to put them first on the command line.

OPTIONS

-color

-nocolor

Turn colors on or off (default: -color if outputting to a terminal, -nocolor otherwise).

-daystart: Measure time relative to the start of today.

-depth: Search in post-order (descendents first).

-follow: Follow all symbolic links (same as -L).

-files0-from FILE: Treat the NUL ('\0')-separated paths in FILE as starting points for the search. Pass -files0-from - to read the paths from standard input.

-ignore_readdir_race

-noignore_readdir_race

Whether to report an error if bfs detects that the file tree is modified during the search (default: -noignore_readdir_race).

-maxdepth N

-mindepth N

Ignore files deeper/shallower than N.

-mount: Don't descend into other mount points (same as -xdev for now, but will skip mount points entirely in the future).

-nohidden: Exclude hidden files and directories.

-noleaf: Ignored; for compatibility with GNU find.

-regextype TYPE: Use TYPE-flavored regexes (default: posix-basic; see -regextype help).

-status: Display a status bar while searching.

-unique: Skip any files that have already been seen. Particularly useful along with -L.

-warn

-nowarn

Turn on or off warnings about the command line.

-xdev: Don't descend into other mount points.

TESTS

-acl: Find files with a non-trivial Access Control List (acl(5)).

-amin [-+]N

-Bmin [-+]N

-cmin [-+]N

-mmin [-+]N

Find files accessed/Birthed/changed/modified N minutes ago.

-anewer FILE

-Bnewer FILE

-cnewer FILE

-mnewer FILE

Find files accessed/Birthed/changed/modified more recently than FILE was modified.

-asince TIME

-Bsince TIME

-csince TIME

-msince TIME

Find files accessed/Birthed/changed/modified more recently than the ISO 8601-style timestamp TIME. See -newerXY for examples of the timestamp format.

-atime [-+]N

-Btime [-+]N

-ctime [-+]N

-mtime [-+]N

Find files accessed/Birthed/changed/modified N days ago.

-capable: Find files with POSIX.1e capabilities(7) set.

-depth [-+]N: Find files with depth N.

-empty: Find empty files/directories.

-executable

-readable

-writable

Find files the current user can execute/read/write.

-false

-true

Always false/true.

-fstype TYPE: Find files on file systems with the given TYPE.

-gid [-+]N

-uid [-+]N

Find files owned by group/user ID N.

-group NAME

-user NAME

Find files owned by the group/user NAME.

-hidden: Find hidden files (those beginning with .).

-ilname GLOB

-iname GLOB

-ipath GLOB

-iregex REGEX

-iwholename GLOB

Case-insensitive versions of -lname/-name/-path/-regex/-wholename.

-inum [-+]N: Find files with inode number N.

-links [-+]N: Find files with N hard links.

-lname GLOB: Find symbolic links whose target matches the GLOB.

-name GLOB: Find files whose name matches the GLOB.

-newer FILE: Find files newer than FILE.

-newerXY REFERENCE: Find files whose X time is newer than the Y time of REFERENCE. X and Y can be any of [aBcm] (access/Birth/change/modification). Y may also be t to parse REFERENCE as an ISO 8601-style timestamp. For example:

1991-12-14

1991-12-14T03:00

1991-12-14T03:00-07:00

1991-12-14T10:00Z

-nogroup

-nouser

Find files owned by nonexistent groups/users.

-path GLOB

-wholename GLOB

Find files whose entire path matches the GLOB.

-perm [-]MODE: Find files with a matching mode.

-regex REGEX: Find files whose entire path matches the regular expression REGEX.

-samefile FILE: Find hard links to FILE.

-since TIME: Find files modified since the ISO 8601-style timestamp TIME. See -newerXY for examples of the timestamp format.

-size [-+]N[cwbkMGTP]: Find files with the given size, in 1-byte characters, 2-byte words, 512-byte blocks (default), or kiB/MiB/GiB/TiB/PiB.

-sparse: Find files that occupy fewer disk blocks than expected.

-type [bcdlpfswD]: Find files of the given type. Possible types are block device, character device, directory, symbolic link, pipe, regular file, socket, whiteout, and Door.

-used [-+]N: Find files last accessed N days after they were changed.

-xattr: Find files with extended attributes (xattr(7)).

-xattrname NAME: Find files with the extended attribute NAME.

-xtype [bcdlpfswD]: Find files of the given type, following links when -type would not, and vice versa.

ACTIONS

-delete

-rm

Delete any found files (implies -depth).

-exec command ... {} ;: Execute a command.

-exec command ... {} +: Execute a command with multiple files at once.

-ok command ... {} ;: Prompt the user whether to execute a command.

-execdir command ... {} ;

-execdir command ... {} +

-okdir command ... {} ;

Like -exec/-ok, but run the command in the same directory as the found file(s).

-exit [STATUS]: Exit immediately with the given status (0 if unspecified).

-fls FILE

-fprint FILE

-fprint0 FILE

-fprintf FILE FORMAT

Like -ls/-print/-print0/-printf, but write to FILE instead of standard output.

-ls: List files like ls -dils.

-print: Print the path to the found file.

-print0: Like -print, but use the null character ('\0') as a separator rather than newlines. Useful in conjunction with xargs -0.

-printf FORMAT: Print according to a format string (see find(1)). These additional format directives are supported:

%w: The file's birth time, in the same format as %a/%c/%t.

%Wk: Field k of the file's birth time, in the same format as %Ak/%Ck/%Tk.

-printx: Like -print, but escape whitespace and quotation characters, to make the output safe for xargs(1). Consider using -print0 and xargs -0 instead.

-prune: Don't descend into this directory.

-quit: Quit immediately.

-version: Print version information.

-help: Print usage information.

ENVIRONMENT

Certain environment variables affect the behavior of bfs.

LANG

LC_*

Specifies the locale(7) in use for various things. bfs is not (yet) translated to any languages except English, but the locale will still affect the format of printed values. Yes/no prompts (e.g. from -ok) will also be interpreted according to the current locale.

LS_COLORS

BFS_COLORS

Controls the colors used when displaying file paths if -color is enabled. bfs interprets LS_COLORS the same way GNU ls(1) does (see dir_colors(5)). BFS_COLORS can be used to customize bfs without affecting other commands.

NO_COLOR: Causes bfs to default to -nocolor if it is set (see https://no-color.org/).

PAGER: Specifies the pager used for -help output. Defaults to more(1).

POSIXLY_CORRECT: Makes bfs conform more strictly to the POSIX.1-2017 specification for find(1). Currently this just disables warnings by default. It does not disable bfs's various extensions to the base POSIX functionality.

EXAMPLES

bfs: With no arguments, bfs prints all files under the current directory in breadth-first order.

bfs -name '*.txt': Prints all the .txt files under the current directory. *.txt is quoted to ensure the glob is processed by bfs rather than the shell.

bfs -name access_log -L /var: Finds all files named access_log under /var, following symbolic links. bfs allows flags and paths to appear anywhere on the command line.