find - search for files in a directory hierarchy
find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-D debugopts] [-Olevel] [starting-point...]
[expression]
This manual page documents the GNU version of
find. GNU
find
searches the directory tree rooted at each given starting-point by evaluating
the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence
(see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the left hand side is
false for
and operations, true for
or), at which point
find moves on to the next file name. If no starting-point is specified,
`.' is assumed.
If you are using
find in an environment where security is important (for
example if you are using it to search directories that are writable by other
users), you should read the `Security Considerations' chapter of the findutils
documentation, which is called
Finding Files and comes with findutils.
That document also includes a lot more detail and discussion than this manual
page, so you may find it a more useful source of information.
The
-H,
-L and
-P options control the treatment of symbolic
links. Command-line arguments following these are taken to be names of files
or directories to be examined, up to the first argument that begins with `-',
or the argument `(' or `!'. That argument and any following arguments are
taken to be the expression describing what is to be searched for. If no paths
are given, the current directory is used. If no expression is given, the
expression
-print is used (but you should probably consider using
-print0 instead, anyway).
This manual page talks about `options' within the expression list. These options
control the behaviour of
find but are specified immediately after the
last path name. The five `real' options
-H,
-L,
-P,
-D and
-O must appear before the first path name, if at all. A
double dash
-- could theoretically be used to signal that any remaining
arguments are not options, but this does not really work due to the way
find determines the end of the following path arguments: it does that
by reading until an expression argument comes (which also starts with a `-').
Now, if a path argument would start with a `-', then
find would treat
it as expression argument instead. Thus, to ensure that all start points are
taken as such, and especially to prevent that wildcard patterns expanded by
the calling shell are not mistakenly treated as expression arguments, it is
generally safer to prefix wildcards or dubious path names with either `./' or
to use absolute path names starting with '/'. Alternatively, it is generally
safe though non-portable to use the GNU option
-files0-from to pass
arbitrary starting points to
find.
- -P
- Never follow symbolic links. This is the default behaviour.
When find examines or prints information about files, and the file
is a symbolic link, the information used shall be taken from the
properties of the symbolic link itself.
- -L
- Follow symbolic links. When find examines or prints
information about files, the information used shall be taken from the
properties of the file to which the link points, not from the link itself
(unless it is a broken symbolic link or find is unable to examine
the file to which the link points). Use of this option implies
-noleaf. If you later use the -P option, -noleaf will
still be in effect. If -L is in effect and find discovers a
symbolic link to a subdirectory during its search, the subdirectory
pointed to by the symbolic link will be searched.
- When the -L option is in effect, the -type
predicate will always match against the type of the file that a symbolic
link points to rather than the link itself (unless the symbolic link is
broken). Actions that can cause symbolic links to become broken while
find is executing (for example -delete) can give rise to
confusing behaviour. Using -L causes the -lname and
-ilname predicates always to return false.
- -H
- Do not follow symbolic links, except while processing the
command line arguments. When find examines or prints information
about files, the information used shall be taken from the properties of
the symbolic link itself. The only exception to this behaviour is when a
file specified on the command line is a symbolic link, and the link can be
resolved. For that situation, the information used is taken from whatever
the link points to (that is, the link is followed). The information about
the link itself is used as a fallback if the file pointed to by the
symbolic link cannot be examined. If -H is in effect and one of the
paths specified on the command line is a symbolic link to a directory, the
contents of that directory will be examined (though of course
-maxdepth 0 would prevent this).
If more than one of
-H,
-L and
-P is specified, each
overrides the others; the last one appearing on the command line takes effect.
Since it is the default, the
-P option should be considered to be in
effect unless either
-H or
-L is specified.
GNU
find frequently stats files during the processing of the command line
itself, before any searching has begun. These options also affect how those
arguments are processed. Specifically, there are a number of tests that
compare files listed on the command line against a file we are currently
considering. In each case, the file specified on the command line will have
been examined and some of its properties will have been saved. If the named
file is in fact a symbolic link, and the
-P option is in effect (or if
neither
-H nor
-L were specified), the information used for the
comparison will be taken from the properties of the symbolic link. Otherwise,
it will be taken from the properties of the file the link points to. If
find cannot follow the link (for example because it has insufficient
privileges or the link points to a nonexistent file) the properties of the
link itself will be used.
When the
-H or
-L options are in effect, any symbolic links listed
as the argument of
-newer will be dereferenced, and the timestamp will
be taken from the file to which the symbolic link points. The same
consideration applies to
-newerXY,
-anewer and
-cnewer.
The
-follow option has a similar effect to
-L, though it takes
effect at the point where it appears (that is, if
-L is not used but
-follow is, any symbolic links appearing after
-follow on the
command line will be dereferenced, and those before it will not).
- -D debugopts
- Print diagnostic information; this can be helpful to
diagnose problems with why find is not doing what you want. The
list of debug options should be comma separated. Compatibility of the
debug options is not guaranteed between releases of findutils. For a
complete list of valid debug options, see the output of find
-D help. Valid debug options include
- exec
- Show diagnostic information relating to -exec, -execdir,
-ok and -okdir
- opt
- Prints diagnostic information relating to the optimisation
of the expression tree; see the -O option.
- rates
- Prints a summary indicating how often each predicate
succeeded or failed.
- search
- Navigate the directory tree verbosely.
- stat
- Print messages as files are examined with the stat
and lstat system calls. The find program tries to minimise
such calls.
- tree
- Show the expression tree in its original and optimised
form.
- all
- Enable all of the other debug options (but
help).
- help
- Explain the debugging options.
- -Olevel
- Enables query optimisation. The find program
reorders tests to speed up execution while preserving the overall effect;
that is, predicates with side effects are not reordered relative to each
other. The optimisations performed at each optimisation level are as
follows.
- 0
- Equivalent to optimisation level 1.
- 1
- This is the default optimisation level and corresponds to
the traditional behaviour. Expressions are reordered so that tests based
only on the names of files (for example -name and -regex)
are performed first.
- 2
- Any -type or -xtype tests are performed after
any tests based only on the names of files, but before any tests that
require information from the inode. On many modern versions of Unix, file
types are returned by readdir() and so these predicates are faster
to evaluate than predicates which need to stat the file first. If you use
the -fstype FOO predicate and specify a filesystem
type FOO which is not known (that is, present in `/etc/mtab') at
the time find starts, that predicate is equivalent to
-false.
- 3
- At this optimisation level, the full cost-based query
optimiser is enabled. The order of tests is modified so that cheap (i.e.
fast) tests are performed first and more expensive ones are performed
later, if necessary. Within each cost band, predicates are evaluated
earlier or later according to whether they are likely to succeed or not.
For -o, predicates which are likely to succeed are evaluated
earlier, and for -a, predicates which are likely to fail are
evaluated earlier.
- The cost-based optimiser has a fixed idea of how likely any
given test is to succeed. In some cases the probability takes account of
the specific nature of the test (for example, -type f is
assumed to be more likely to succeed than -type c). The
cost-based optimiser is currently being evaluated. If it does not actually
improve the performance of find, it will be removed again.
Conversely, optimisations that prove to be reliable, robust and effective
may be enabled at lower optimisation levels over time. However, the
default behaviour (i.e. optimisation level 1) will not be changed in the
4.3.x release series. The findutils test suite runs all the tests on
find at each optimisation level and ensures that the result is the
same.
The part of the command line after the list of starting points is the
expression. This is a kind of query specification describing how we
match files and what we do with the files that were matched. An expression is
composed of a sequence of things:
- Tests
- Tests return a true or false value, usually on the basis of
some property of a file we are considering. The -empty test for
example is true only when the current file is empty.
- Actions
- Actions have side effects (such as printing something on
the standard output) and return either true or false, usually based on
whether or not they are successful. The -print action for example
prints the name of the current file on the standard output.
- Global options
- Global options affect the operation of tests and actions
specified on any part of the command line. Global options always return
true. The -depth option for example makes find traverse the
file system in a depth-first order.
- Positional options
- Positional options affect only tests or actions which
follow them. Positional options always return true. The -regextype
option for example is positional, specifying the regular expression
dialect for regular expressions occurring later on the command line.
- Operators
- Operators join together the other items within the
expression. They include for example -o (meaning logical OR) and
-a (meaning logical AND). Where an operator is missing, -a
is assumed.
The
-print action is performed on all files for which the whole
expression is true, unless it contains an action other than
-prune or
-quit. Actions which inhibit the default
-print are
-delete,
-exec,
-execdir,
-ok,
-okdir,
-fls,
-fprint,
-fprintf,
-ls,
-print and
-printf.
The
-delete action also acts like an option (since it implies
-depth).
Positional options always return true. They affect only tests occurring later on
the command line.
- -daystart
- Measure times (for -amin, -atime,
-cmin, -ctime, -mmin, and -mtime) from the
beginning of today rather than from 24 hours ago. This option only affects
tests which appear later on the command line.
- -follow
- Deprecated; use the -L option instead. Dereference
symbolic links. Implies -noleaf. The -follow option affects
only those tests which appear after it on the command line. Unless the
-H or -L option has been specified, the position of the
-follow option changes the behaviour of the -newer
predicate; any files listed as the argument of -newer will be
dereferenced if they are symbolic links. The same consideration applies to
-newerXY, -anewer and -cnewer. Similarly, the
-type predicate will always match against the type of the file that
a symbolic link points to rather than the link itself. Using
-follow causes the -lname and -ilname predicates
always to return false.
- -regextype type
- Changes the regular expression syntax understood by
-regex and -iregex tests which occur later on the command
line. To see which regular expression types are known, use
-regextype help. The Texinfo documentation (see SEE
ALSO) explains the meaning of and differences between the various
types of regular expression.
- -warn, -nowarn
- Turn warning messages on or off. These warnings apply only
to the command line usage, not to any conditions that find might
encounter when it searches directories. The default behaviour corresponds
to -warn if standard input is a tty, and to -nowarn
otherwise. If a warning message relating to command-line usage is
produced, the exit status of find is not affected. If the
POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, and -warn is
also used, it is not specified which, if any, warnings will be active.
Global options always return true. Global options take effect even for tests
which occur earlier on the command line. To prevent confusion, global options
should specified on the command-line after the list of start points, just
before the first test, positional option or action. If you specify a global
option in some other place,
find will issue a warning message
explaining that this can be confusing.
The global options occur after the list of start points, and so are not the same
kind of option as
-L, for example.
- -d
- A synonym for -depth, for compatibility with FreeBSD,
NetBSD, MacOS X and OpenBSD.
- -depth
- Process each directory's contents before the directory
itself. The -delete action also implies -depth.
- -files0-from file
- Read the starting points from file instead of
getting them on the command line. In contrast to the known limitations of
passing starting points via arguments on the command line, namely the
limitation of the amount of file names, and the inherent ambiguity of file
names clashing with option names, using this option allows to safely pass
an arbitrary number of starting points to find.
Using this option and passing starting points on the command line is
mutually exclusive, and is therefore not allowed at the same time.
The file argument is mandatory. One can use
-files0-from - to read the list of starting points from the
standard input stream, and e.g. from a pipe. In this case, the
actions -ok and -okdir are not allowed, because they would
obviously interfere with reading from standard input in order to
get a user confirmation.
The starting points in file have to be separated by ASCII NUL
characters. Two consecutive NUL characters, i.e., a starting point with a
Zero-length file name is not allowed and will lead to an error diagnostic
followed by a non-Zero exit code later.
In the case the given file is empty, find does not process any
starting point and therefore will exit immediately after parsing the
program arguments. This is unlike the standard invocation where
find assumes the current directory as starting point if no path
argument is passed.
The processing of the starting points is otherwise as usual, e.g.
find will recurse into subdirectories unless otherwise prevented.
To process only the starting points, one can additionally pass
-maxdepth 0.
Further notes: if a file is listed more than once in the input file, it is
unspecified whether it is visited more than once. If the file is
mutated during the operation of find, the result is unspecified as
well. Finally, the seek position within the named file at the time
find exits, be it with -quit or in any other way, is also
unspecified. By "unspecified" here is meant that it may or may
not work or do any specific thing, and that the behavior may change from
platform to platform, or from findutils release to release.
- -help, --help
- Print a summary of the command-line usage of find
and exit.
- -ignore_readdir_race
- Normally, find will emit an error message when it
fails to stat a file. If you give this option and a file is deleted
between the time find reads the name of the file from the directory
and the time it tries to stat the file, no error message will be issued.
This also applies to files or directories whose names are given on the
command line. This option takes effect at the time the command line is
read, which means that you cannot search one part of the filesystem with
this option on and part of it with this option off (if you need to do
that, you will need to issue two find commands instead, one with
the option and one without it).
Furthermore, find with the -ignore_readdir_race option will
ignore errors of the -delete action in the case the file has
disappeared since the parent directory was read: it will not output an
error diagnostic, and the return code of the -delete action will be
true.
- -maxdepth levels
- Descend at most levels (a non-negative integer)
levels of directories below the starting-points. Using
-maxdepth 0 means only apply the tests and actions to the
starting-points themselves.
- -mindepth levels
- Do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than
levels (a non-negative integer). Using -mindepth 1
means process all files except the starting-points.
- -mount
- Don't descend directories on other filesystems. An
alternate name for -xdev, for compatibility with some other
versions of find.
- -noignore_readdir_race
- Turns off the effect of -ignore_readdir_race.
- -noleaf
- Do not optimize by assuming that directories contain 2
fewer subdirectories than their hard link count. This option is needed
when searching filesystems that do not follow the Unix directory-link
convention, such as CD-ROM or MS-DOS filesystems or AFS volume mount
points. Each directory on a normal Unix filesystem has at least 2 hard
links: its name and its `.' entry. Additionally, its subdirectories (if
any) each have a `..' entry linked to that directory. When find is
examining a directory, after it has statted 2 fewer subdirectories than
the directory's link count, it knows that the rest of the entries in the
directory are non-directories (`leaf' files in the directory tree). If
only the files' names need to be examined, there is no need to stat them;
this gives a significant increase in search speed.
- -version, --version
- Print the find version number and exit.
- -xdev
- Don't descend directories on other filesystems.
Some tests, for example
-newerXY and
-samefile, allow comparison
between the file currently being examined and some reference file specified on
the command line. When these tests are used, the interpretation of the
reference file is determined by the options
-H,
-L and
-P
and any previous
-follow, but the reference file is only examined once,
at the time the command line is parsed. If the reference file cannot be
examined (for example, the
stat(2) system call fails for it), an error
message is issued, and
find exits with a nonzero status.
A numeric argument
n can be specified to tests (like
-amin,
-mtime,
-gid,
-inum,
-links,
-size,
-uid and
-used) as
- +n
- for greater than n,
- -n
- for less than n,
- n
- for exactly n.
Supported tests:
- -amin n
- File was last accessed less than, more than or exactly
n minutes ago.
- -anewer reference
- Time of the last access of the current file is more recent
than that of the last data modification of the reference file. If
reference is a symbolic link and the -H option or the
-L option is in effect, then the time of the last data modification
of the file it points to is always used.
- -atime n
- File was last accessed less than, more than or exactly
n*24 hours ago. When find figures out how many 24-hour periods ago
the file was last accessed, any fractional part is ignored, so to match
-atime +1, a file has to have been accessed at least
two days ago.
- -cmin n
- File's status was last changed less than, more than or
exactly n minutes ago.
- -cnewer reference
- Time of the last status change of the current file is more
recent than that of the last data modification of the reference
file. If reference is a symbolic link and the -H option or
the -L option is in effect, then the time of the last data
modification of the file it points to is always used.
- -ctime n
- File's status was last changed less than, more than or
exactly n*24 hours ago. See the comments for -atime to
understand how rounding affects the interpretation of file status change
times.
- -empty
- File is empty and is either a regular file or a directory.
- -executable
- Matches files which are executable and directories which
are searchable (in a file name resolution sense) by the current user. This
takes into account access control lists and other permissions artefacts
which the -perm test ignores. This test makes use of the
access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do
UID mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement
access(2) in the client's kernel and so cannot make use of the UID
mapping information held on the server. Because this test is based only on
the result of the access(2) system call, there is no guarantee that
a file for which this test succeeds can actually be executed.
- -false
- Always false.
- -fstype type
- File is on a filesystem of type type. The valid
filesystem types vary among different versions of Unix; an incomplete list
of filesystem types that are accepted on some version of Unix or another
is: ufs, 4.2, 4.3, nfs, tmp, mfs, S51K, S52K. You can use -printf
with the %F directive to see the types of your filesystems.
- -gid n
- File's numeric group ID is less than, more than or exactly
n.
- -group gname
- File belongs to group gname (numeric group ID
allowed).
- -ilname pattern
- Like -lname, but the match is case insensitive. If
the -L option or the -follow option is in effect, this test
returns false unless the symbolic link is broken.
- -iname pattern
- Like -name, but the match is case insensitive. For
example, the patterns `fo*' and `F??' match the file names `Foo', `FOO',
`foo', `fOo', etc. The pattern `*foo*` will also match a file called
'.foobar'.
- -inum n
- File has inode number smaller than, greater than or exactly
n. It is normally easier to use the -samefile test instead.
- -ipath pattern
- Like -path. but the match is case insensitive.
- -iregex pattern
- Like -regex, but the match is case insensitive.
- -iwholename pattern
- See -ipath. This alternative is less portable than
-ipath.
- -links n
- File has less than, more than or exactly n hard
links.
- -lname pattern
- File is a symbolic link whose contents match shell pattern
pattern. The metacharacters do not treat `/' or `.' specially. If
the -L option or the -follow option is in effect, this test
returns false unless the symbolic link is broken.
- -mmin n
- File's data was last modified less than, more than or
exactly n minutes ago.
- -mtime n
- File's data was last modified less than, more than or
exactly n*24 hours ago. See the comments for -atime to
understand how rounding affects the interpretation of file modification
times.
- -name pattern
- Base of file name (the path with the leading directories
removed) matches shell pattern pattern. Because the leading
directories are removed, the file names considered for a match with
-name will never include a slash, so `-name a/b' will never match
anything (you probably need to use -path instead). A warning is
issued if you try to do this, unless the environment variable
POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. The metacharacters (`*', `?', and `[]')
match a `.' at the start of the base name (this is a change in
findutils-4.2.2; see section STANDARDS CONFORMANCE below). To ignore a
directory and the files under it, use -prune rather than checking
every file in the tree; see an example in the description of that action.
Braces are not recognised as being special, despite the fact that some
shells including Bash imbue braces with a special meaning in shell
patterns. The filename matching is performed with the use of the
fnmatch(3) library function. Don't forget to enclose the pattern in
quotes in order to protect it from expansion by the shell.
- -newer reference
- Time of the last data modification of the current file is
more recent than that of the last data modification of the
reference file. If reference is a symbolic link and the
-H option or the -L option is in effect, then the time of
the last data modification of the file it points to is always used.
- -newerXY reference
- Succeeds if timestamp X of the file being considered
is newer than timestamp Y of the file reference. The letters
X and Y can be any of the following letters:
a |
The access time of the file reference
|
B |
The birth time of the file reference
|
c |
The inode status change time of reference
|
m |
The modification time of the file reference
|
t |
reference is interpreted directly as a time |
Some combinations are invalid; for example, it is invalid for X to be
t. Some combinations are not implemented on all systems; for
example B is not supported on all systems. If an invalid or
unsupported combination of XY is specified, a fatal error results.
Time specifications are interpreted as for the argument to the -d
option of GNU date. If you try to use the birth time of a reference
file, and the birth time cannot be determined, a fatal error message
results. If you specify a test which refers to the birth time of files
being examined, this test will fail for any files where the birth time is
unknown.
- -nogroup
- No group corresponds to file's numeric group ID.
- -nouser
- No user corresponds to file's numeric user ID.
- -path pattern
- File name matches shell pattern pattern. The
metacharacters do not treat `/' or `.' specially; so, for example,
find . -path "./sr*sc"
will print an entry for a directory called ./src/misc (if one
exists). To ignore a whole directory tree, use -prune rather than
checking every file in the tree. Note that the pattern match test applies
to the whole file name, starting from one of the start points named on the
command line. It would only make sense to use an absolute path name here
if the relevant start point is also an absolute path. This means that this
command will never match anything:
find bar -path /foo/bar/myfile -print
Find compares the -path argument with the concatenation of a
directory name and the base name of the file it's examining. Since the
concatenation will never end with a slash, -path arguments ending
in a slash will match nothing (except perhaps a start point specified on
the command line). The predicate -path is also supported by HP-UX
find and is part of the POSIX 2008 standard.
- -perm mode
- File's permission bits are exactly mode (octal or
symbolic). Since an exact match is required, if you want to use this form
for symbolic modes, you may have to specify a rather complex mode string.
For example `-perm g=w' will only match files which have mode 0020 (that
is, ones for which group write permission is the only permission set). It
is more likely that you will want to use the `/' or `-' forms, for example
`-perm -g=w', which matches any file with group write permission. See the
EXAMPLES section for some illustrative examples.
- -perm -mode
- All of the permission bits mode are set for the
file. Symbolic modes are accepted in this form, and this is usually the
way in which you would want to use them. You must specify `u', `g' or `o'
if you use a symbolic mode. See the EXAMPLES section for some
illustrative examples.
- -perm /mode
- Any of the permission bits mode are set for the
file. Symbolic modes are accepted in this form. You must specify `u', `g'
or `o' if you use a symbolic mode. See the EXAMPLES section for
some illustrative examples. If no permission bits in mode are set,
this test matches any file (the idea here is to be consistent with the
behaviour of -perm -000).
- -perm +mode
- This is no longer supported (and has been deprecated since
2005). Use -perm /mode instead.
- -readable
- Matches files which are readable by the current user. This
takes into account access control lists and other permissions artefacts
which the -perm test ignores. This test makes use of the
access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do
UID mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement
access(2) in the client's kernel and so cannot make use of the UID
mapping information held on the server.
- -regex pattern
- File name matches regular expression pattern. This
is a match on the whole path, not a search. For example, to match a file
named ./fubar3, you can use the regular expression `.*bar.' or
`.*b.*3', but not `f.*r3'. The regular expressions understood by
find are by default Emacs Regular Expressions (except that `.'
matches newline), but this can be changed with the -regextype
option.
- -samefile name
- File refers to the same inode as name. When
-L is in effect, this can include symbolic links.
- -size n[cwbkMG]
- File uses less than, more than or exactly n units of
space, rounding up. The following suffixes can be used:
- `b'
- for 512-byte blocks (this is the default if no suffix is
used)
- `c'
- for bytes
- `w'
- for two-byte words
- `k'
- for kibibytes (KiB, units of 1024 bytes)
- `M'
- for mebibytes (MiB, units of 1024 * 1024 = 1048576
bytes)
- `G'
- for gibibytes (GiB, units of 1024 * 1024 * 1024 =
1073741824 bytes)
- The size is simply the st_size member of the struct stat
populated by the lstat (or stat) system call, rounded up as shown above.
In other words, it's consistent with the result you get for
ls -l. Bear in mind that the `%k' and `%b' format specifiers
of -printf handle sparse files differently. The `b' suffix always
denotes 512-byte blocks and never 1024-byte blocks, which is different to
the behaviour of -ls.
- The + and - prefixes signify greater than and less than, as
usual; i.e., an exact size of n units does not match. Bear in mind
that the size is rounded up to the next unit. Therefore
-size -1M is not equivalent to
-size -1048576c. The former only matches empty files, the
latter matches files from 0 to 1,048,575 bytes.
- -true
- Always true.
- -type c
- File is of type c:
- b
- block (buffered) special
- c
- character (unbuffered) special
- d
- directory
- p
- named pipe (FIFO)
- f
- regular file
- l
- symbolic link; this is never true if the -L option
or the -follow option is in effect, unless the symbolic link is
broken. If you want to search for symbolic links when -L is in
effect, use -xtype.
- s
- socket
- D
- door (Solaris)
- To search for more than one type at once, you can supply
the combined list of type letters separated by a comma `,' (GNU
extension).
- -uid n
- File's numeric user ID is less than, more than or exactly
n.
- -used n
- File was last accessed less than, more than or exactly
n days after its status was last changed.
- -user uname
- File is owned by user uname (numeric user ID
allowed).
- -wholename pattern
- See -path. This alternative is less portable than
-path.
- -writable
- Matches files which are writable by the current user. This
takes into account access control lists and other permissions artefacts
which the -perm test ignores. This test makes use of the
access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do
UID mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement
access(2) in the client's kernel and so cannot make use of the UID
mapping information held on the server.
- -xtype c
- The same as -type unless the file is a symbolic
link. For symbolic links: if the -H or -P option was
specified, true if the file is a link to a file of type c; if the
-L option has been given, true if c is `l'. In other words,
for symbolic links, -xtype checks the type of the file that
-type does not check.
- -context pattern
- (SELinux only) Security context of the file matches glob
pattern.
- -delete
- Delete files or directories; true if removal succeeded. If
the removal failed, an error message is issued and find's exit
status will be nonzero (when it eventually exits).
Warning: Don't forget that find evaluates the command line as
an expression, so putting -delete first will make find try
to delete everything below the starting points you specified.
The use of the -delete action on the command line automatically turns
on the -depth option. As in turn -depth makes -prune
ineffective, the -delete action cannot usefully be combined with
-prune.
Often, the user might want to test a find command line with -print
prior to adding -delete for the actual removal run. To avoid
surprising results, it is usually best to remember to use -depth
explicitly during those earlier test runs.
The -delete action will fail to remove a directory unless it is
empty.
Together with the -ignore_readdir_race option, find will
ignore errors of the -delete action in the case the file has
disappeared since the parent directory was read: it will not output an
error diagnostic, not change the exit code to nonzero, and the return code
of the -delete action will be true.
- -exec command ;
- Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All
following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the
command until an argument consisting of `;' is encountered. The string
`{}' is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere it
occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in arguments where it is
alone, as in some versions of find. Both of these constructions
might need to be escaped (with a `\') or quoted to protect them from
expansion by the shell. See the EXAMPLES section for examples of
the use of the -exec option. The specified command is run once for
each matched file. The command is executed in the starting directory.
There are unavoidable security problems surrounding use of the
-exec action; you should use the -execdir option instead.
- -exec command {} +
- This variant of the -exec action runs the specified
command on the selected files, but the command line is built by appending
each selected file name at the end; the total number of invocations of the
command will be much less than the number of matched files. The command
line is built in much the same way that xargs builds its command
lines. Only one instance of `{}' is allowed within the command, and it
must appear at the end, immediately before the `+'; it needs to be escaped
(with a `\') or quoted to protect it from interpretation by the shell. The
command is executed in the starting directory. If any invocation with the
`+' form returns a non-zero value as exit status, then find returns
a non-zero exit status. If find encounters an error, this can
sometimes cause an immediate exit, so some pending commands may not be run
at all. For this reason
-exec my-command ... {} + -quit
may not result in my-command actually being run. This variant of
-exec always returns true.
- -execdir command ;
- -execdir command {} +
- Like -exec, but the specified command is run from
the subdirectory containing the matched file, which is not normally the
directory in which you started find. As with -exec, the {} should
be quoted if find is being invoked from a shell. This a much more secure
method for invoking commands, as it avoids race conditions during
resolution of the paths to the matched files. As with the -exec
action, the `+' form of -execdir will build a command line to
process more than one matched file, but any given invocation of
command will only list files that exist in the same subdirectory.
If you use this option, you must ensure that your PATH environment
variable does not reference `.'; otherwise, an attacker can run any
commands they like by leaving an appropriately-named file in a directory
in which you will run -execdir. The same applies to having entries
in PATH which are empty or which are not absolute directory names.
If any invocation with the `+' form returns a non-zero value as exit
status, then find returns a non-zero exit status. If find
encounters an error, this can sometimes cause an immediate exit, so some
pending commands may not be run at all. The result of the action depends
on whether the + or the ; variant is being used;
-execdir command {} + always returns
true, while -execdir command {} ;
returns true only if command returns 0.
- -fls file
- True; like -ls but write to file like
-fprint. The output file is always created, even if the predicate
is never matched. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information
about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
- -fprint file
- True; print the full file name into file file. If
file does not exist when find is run, it is created; if it
does exist, it is truncated. The file names /dev/stdout and
/dev/stderr are handled specially; they refer to the standard
output and standard error output, respectively. The output file is always
created, even if the predicate is never matched. See the UNUSUAL
FILENAMES section for information about how unusual characters in
filenames are handled.
- -fprint0 file
- True; like -print0 but write to file like
-fprint. The output file is always created, even if the predicate
is never matched. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information
about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
- -fprintf file format
- True; like -printf but write to file like
-fprint. The output file is always created, even if the predicate
is never matched. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information
about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
- -ls
- True; list current file in ls -dils format on
standard output. The block counts are of 1 KB blocks, unless the
environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, in which case 512-byte
blocks are used. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information
about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
- -ok command ;
- Like -exec but ask the user first. If the user
agrees, run the command. Otherwise just return false. If the command is
run, its standard input is redirected from /dev/null. This action
may not be specified together with the -files0-from option.
- The response to the prompt is matched against a pair of
regular expressions to determine if it is an affirmative or negative
response. This regular expression is obtained from the system if the
POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, or otherwise from
find's message translations. If the system has no suitable
definition, find's own definition will be used. In either case, the
interpretation of the regular expression itself will be affected by the
environment variables LC_CTYPE (character classes) and
LC_COLLATE (character ranges and equivalence classes).
- -okdir command ;
- Like -execdir but ask the user first in the same way
as for -ok. If the user does not agree, just return false. If the
command is run, its standard input is redirected from /dev/null.
This action may not be specified together with the -files0-from
option.
- -print
- True; print the full file name on the standard output,
followed by a newline. If you are piping the output of find into
another program and there is the faintest possibility that the files which
you are searching for might contain a newline, then you should seriously
consider using the -print0 option instead of -print. See the
UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual
characters in filenames are handled.
- -print0
- True; print the full file name on the standard output,
followed by a null character (instead of the newline character that
-print uses). This allows file names that contain newlines or other
types of white space to be correctly interpreted by programs that process
the find output. This option corresponds to the -0 option of
xargs.
- -printf format
- True; print format on the standard output,
interpreting `\' escapes and `%' directives. Field widths and precisions
can be specified as with the printf(3) C function. Please note that
many of the fields are printed as %s rather than %d, and this may mean
that flags don't work as you might expect. This also means that the `-'
flag does work (it forces fields to be left-aligned). Unlike
-print, -printf does not add a newline at the end of the
string. The escapes and directives are:
- \a
- Alarm bell.
- \b
- Backspace.
- \c
- Stop printing from this format immediately and flush the
output.
- \f
- Form feed.
- \n
- Newline.
- \r
- Carriage return.
- \t
- Horizontal tab.
- \v
- Vertical tab.
- \0
- ASCII NUL.
- \\
- A literal backslash (`\').
- \NNN
- The character whose ASCII code is NNN (octal).
A `\' character followed by any other character is treated as an ordinary
character, so they both are printed.
- %%
- A literal percent sign.
- %a
- File's last access time in the format returned by the C
ctime(3) function.
- %Ak
- File's last access time in the format specified by
k, which is either `@' or a directive for the C strftime(3)
function. The following shows an incomplete list of possible values for
k. Please refer to the documentation of strftime(3) for the
full list. Some of the conversion specification characters might not be
available on all systems, due to differences in the implementation of the
strftime(3) library function.
- @
- seconds since Jan. 1, 1970, 00:00 GMT, with fractional
part.
Time fields:
- H
- hour (00..23)
- I
- hour (01..12)
- k
- hour ( 0..23)
- l
- hour ( 1..12)
- M
- minute (00..59)
- p
- locale's AM or PM
- r
- time, 12-hour (hh:mm:ss [AP]M)
- S
- Second (00.00 .. 61.00). There is a fractional part.
- T
- time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss.xxxxxxxxxx)
- +
- Date and time, separated by `+', for example
`2004-04-28+22:22:05.0'. This is a GNU extension. The time is given in the
current timezone (which may be affected by setting the TZ
environment variable). The seconds field includes a fractional part.
- X
- locale's time representation (H:M:S). The seconds field
includes a fractional part.
- Z
- time zone (e.g., EDT), or nothing if no time zone is
determinable
Date fields:
- a
- locale's abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
- A
- locale's full weekday name, variable length
(Sunday..Saturday)
- b
- locale's abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)
- B
- locale's full month name, variable length
(January..December)
- c
- locale's date and time (Sat Nov 04 12:02:33 EST 1989). The
format is the same as for ctime(3) and so to preserve compatibility
with that format, there is no fractional part in the seconds field.
- d
- day of month (01..31)
- D
- date (mm/dd/yy)
- F
- date (yyyy-mm-dd)
- h
- same as b
- j
- day of year (001..366)
- m
- month (01..12)
- U
- week number of year with Sunday as first day of week
(00..53)
- w
- day of week (0..6)
- W
- week number of year with Monday as first day of week
(00..53)
- x
- locale's date representation (mm/dd/yy)
- y
- last two digits of year (00..99)
- Y
- year (1970...)
- %b
- The amount of disk space used for this file in 512-byte
blocks. Since disk space is allocated in multiples of the filesystem block
size this is usually greater than %s/512, but it can also be smaller if
the file is a sparse file.
- %Bk
- File's birth time, i.e., its creation time, in the format
specified by k, which is the same as for %A. This directive
produces an empty string if the underlying operating system or filesystem
does not support birth times.
- %c
- File's last status change time in the format returned by
the C ctime(3) function.
- %Ck
- File's last status change time in the format specified by
k, which is the same as for %A.
- %d
- File's depth in the directory tree; 0 means the file is a
starting-point.
- %D
- The device number on which the file exists (the st_dev
field of struct stat), in decimal.
- %f
- Print the basename; the file's name with any leading
directories removed (only the last element). For /, the result is
`/'. See the EXAMPLES section for an example.
- %F
- Type of the filesystem the file is on; this value can be
used for -fstype.
- %g
- File's group name, or numeric group ID if the group has no
name.
- %G
- File's numeric group ID.
- %h
- Dirname; the Leading directories of the file's name (all
but the last element). If the file name contains no slashes (since it is
in the current directory) the %h specifier expands to `.'. For files which
are themselves directories and contain a slash (including /), %h
expands to the empty string. See the EXAMPLES section for an
example.
- %H
- Starting-point under which file was found.
- %i
- File's inode number (in decimal).
- %k
- The amount of disk space used for this file in 1 KB
blocks. Since disk space is allocated in multiples of the filesystem block
size this is usually greater than %s/1024, but it can also be smaller if
the file is a sparse file.
- %l
- Object of symbolic link (empty string if file is not a
symbolic link).
- %m
- File's permission bits (in octal). This option uses the
`traditional' numbers which most Unix implementations use, but if your
particular implementation uses an unusual ordering of octal permissions
bits, you will see a difference between the actual value of the file's
mode and the output of %m. Normally you will want to have a leading zero
on this number, and to do this, you should use the # flag (as in,
for example, `%#m').
- %M
- File's permissions (in symbolic form, as for ls).
This directive is supported in findutils 4.2.5 and later.
- %n
- Number of hard links to file.
- %p
- File's name.
- %P
- File's name with the name of the starting-point under which
it was found removed.
- %s
- File's size in bytes.
- %S
- File's sparseness. This is calculated as
(BLOCKSIZE*st_blocks / st_size). The exact value you will get for an
ordinary file of a certain length is system-dependent. However, normally
sparse files will have values less than 1.0, and files which use indirect
blocks may have a value which is greater than 1.0. In general the number
of blocks used by a file is file system dependent. The value used for
BLOCKSIZE is system-dependent, but is usually 512 bytes. If the file size
is zero, the value printed is undefined. On systems which lack support for
st_blocks, a file's sparseness is assumed to be 1.0.
- %t
- File's last modification time in the format returned by the
C ctime(3) function.
- %Tk
- File's last modification time in the format specified by
k, which is the same as for %A.
- %u
- File's user name, or numeric user ID if the user has no
name.
- %U
- File's numeric user ID.
- %y
- File's type (like in ls -l), U=unknown type
(shouldn't happen)
- %Y
- File's type (like %y), plus follow symbolic links:
`L'=loop, `N'=nonexistent, `?' for any other error when determining the
type of the target of a symbolic link.
- %Z
- (SELinux only) file's security context.
- %{ %[ %(
- Reserved for future use.
A `%' character followed by any other character is discarded, but the other
character is printed (don't rely on this, as further format characters may be
introduced). A `%' at the end of the format argument causes undefined
behaviour since there is no following character. In some locales, it may hide
your door keys, while in others it may remove the final page from the novel
you are reading.
The %m and %d directives support the
#,
0 and
+ flags, but
the other directives do not, even if they print numbers. Numeric directives
that do not support these flags include
G,
U,
b,
D,
k and
n. The `-' format flag is supported and changes
the alignment of a field from right-justified (which is the default) to
left-justified.
See the
UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual
characters in filenames are handled.
- -prune
- True; if the file is a directory, do not descend into it.
If -depth is given, then -prune has no effect. Because
-delete implies -depth, you cannot usefully use
-prune and -delete together. For example, to skip the
directory src/emacs and all files and directories under it, and
print the names of the other files found, do something like this:
find . -path ./src/emacs -prune -o -print
- -quit
- Exit immediately (with return value zero if no errors have
occurred). This is different to -prune because -prune only
applies to the contents of pruned directories, while -quit simply
makes find stop immediately. No child processes will be left
running. Any command lines which have been built by
-exec ... + or -execdir ... +
are invoked before the program is exited. After -quit is executed,
no more files specified on the command line will be processed. For
example,
`find /tmp/foo /tmp/bar -print -quit`
will print only `/tmp/foo`.
One common use of -quit is to stop searching the file system once we
have found what we want. For example, if we want to find just a single
file we can do this:
find / -name needle -print -quit
Listed in order of decreasing precedence:
- ( expr )
- Force precedence. Since parentheses are special to the
shell, you will normally need to quote them. Many of the examples in this
manual page use backslashes for this purpose: `\(...\)' instead of
`(...)'.
- ! expr
- True if expr is false. This character will also
usually need protection from interpretation by the shell.
- -not expr
- Same as ! expr, but not POSIX compliant.
- expr1 expr2
- Two expressions in a row are taken to be joined with an
implied -a; expr2 is not evaluated if expr1 is false.
-
expr1 -a expr2
- Same as expr1 expr2.
-
expr1 -and expr2
- Same as expr1 expr2, but not POSIX compliant.
-
expr1 -o expr2
- Or; expr2 is not evaluated if expr1 is true.
-
expr1 -or expr2
- Same as expr1 -o expr2, but not POSIX
compliant.
-
expr1 , expr2
- List; both expr1 and expr2 are always
evaluated. The value of expr1 is discarded; the value of the list
is the value of expr2. The comma operator can be useful for
searching for several different types of thing, but traversing the
filesystem hierarchy only once. The -fprintf action can be used to
list the various matched items into several different output files.
Please note that
-a when specified implicitly (for example by two tests
appearing without an explicit operator between them) or explicitly has higher
precedence than
-o. This means that
find . -name afile -o -name
bfile -print will never print
afile.
Many of the actions of
find result in the printing of data which is under
the control of other users. This includes file names, sizes, modification
times and so forth. File names are a potential problem since they can contain
any character except `\0' and `/'. Unusual characters in file names can do
unexpected and often undesirable things to your terminal (for example,
changing the settings of your function keys on some terminals). Unusual
characters are handled differently by various actions, as described below.
- -print0, -fprint0
- Always print the exact filename, unchanged, even if the
output is going to a terminal.
- -ls, -fls
- Unusual characters are always escaped. White space,
backslash, and double quote characters are printed using C-style escaping
(for example `\f', `\"'). Other unusual characters are printed using
an octal escape. Other printable characters (for -ls and
-fls these are the characters between octal 041 and 0176) are
printed as-is.
- -printf, -fprintf
- If the output is not going to a terminal, it is printed
as-is. Otherwise, the result depends on which directive is in use. The
directives %D, %F, %g, %G, %H, %Y, and %y expand to values which are not
under control of files' owners, and so are printed as-is. The directives
%a, %b, %c, %d, %i, %k, %m, %M, %n, %s, %t, %u and %U have values which
are under the control of files' owners but which cannot be used to send
arbitrary data to the terminal, and so these are printed as-is. The
directives %f, %h, %l, %p and %P are quoted. This quoting is performed in
the same way as for GNU ls. This is not the same quoting mechanism
as the one used for -ls and -fls. If you are able to decide
what format to use for the output of find then it is normally
better to use `\0' as a terminator than to use newline, as file names can
contain white space and newline characters. The setting of the
LC_CTYPE environment variable is used to determine which characters
need to be quoted.
- -print, -fprint
- Quoting is handled in the same way as for -printf
and -fprintf. If you are using find in a script or in a
situation where the matched files might have arbitrary names, you should
consider using -print0 instead of -print.
The
-ok and
-okdir actions print the current filename as-is. This
may change in a future release.
For closest compliance to the POSIX standard, you should set the
POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable. The following options are
specified in the POSIX standard (IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, 2016 Edition):
- -H
- This option is supported.
- -L
- This option is supported.
- -name
- This option is supported, but POSIX conformance depends on
the POSIX conformance of the system's fnmatch(3) library function.
As of findutils-4.2.2, shell metacharacters (`*', `?' or `[]' for example)
match a leading `.', because IEEE PASC interpretation 126 requires this.
This is a change from previous versions of findutils.
- -type
- Supported. POSIX specifies `b', `c', `d', `l', `p', `f' and
`s'. GNU find also supports `D', representing a Door, where the OS
provides these. Furthermore, GNU find allows multiple types to be
specified at once in a comma-separated list.
- -ok
- Supported. Interpretation of the response is according to
the `yes' and `no' patterns selected by setting the LC_MESSAGES
environment variable. When the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable
is set, these patterns are taken system's definition of a positive (yes)
or negative (no) response. See the system's documentation for
nl_langinfo(3), in particular YESEXPR and NOEXPR. When
POSIXLY_CORRECT is not set, the patterns are instead taken from
find's own message catalogue.
- -newer
- Supported. If the file specified is a symbolic link, it is
always dereferenced. This is a change from previous behaviour, which used
to take the relevant time from the symbolic link; see the HISTORY section
below.
- -perm
- Supported. If the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment
variable is not set, some mode arguments (for example +a+x) which are not
valid in POSIX are supported for backward-compatibility.
- Other primaries
- The primaries -atime, -ctime, -depth,
-exec, -group, -links, -mtime,
-nogroup, -nouser, -ok, -path, -print,
-prune, -size, -user and -xdev are all
supported.
The POSIX standard specifies parentheses `(', `)', negation `!' and the logical
AND/OR operators
-a and
-o.
All other options, predicates, expressions and so forth are extensions beyond
the POSIX standard. Many of these extensions are not unique to GNU find,
however.
The POSIX standard requires that
find detects loops:
- The find utility shall detect infinite loops; that
is, entering a previously visited directory that is an ancestor of the
last file encountered. When it detects an infinite loop, find shall write
a diagnostic message to standard error and shall either recover its
position in the hierarchy or terminate.
GNU
find complies with these requirements. The link count of directories
which contain entries which are hard links to an ancestor will often be lower
than they otherwise should be. This can mean that GNU find will sometimes
optimise away the visiting of a subdirectory which is actually a link to an
ancestor. Since
find does not actually enter such a subdirectory, it is
allowed to avoid emitting a diagnostic message. Although this behaviour may be
somewhat confusing, it is unlikely that anybody actually depends on this
behaviour. If the leaf optimisation has been turned off with
-noleaf,
the directory entry will always be examined and the diagnostic message will be
issued where it is appropriate. Symbolic links cannot be used to create
filesystem cycles as such, but if the
-L option or the
-follow
option is in use, a diagnostic message is issued when
find encounters a
loop of symbolic links. As with loops containing hard links, the leaf
optimisation will often mean that
find knows that it doesn't need to
call
stat() or
chdir() on the symbolic link, so this diagnostic
is frequently not necessary.
The
-d option is supported for compatibility with various BSD systems,
but you should use the POSIX-compliant option
-depth instead.
The
POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable does not affect the behaviour of
the
-regex or
-iregex tests because those tests aren't specified
in the POSIX standard.
- LANG
- Provides a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null.
- LC_ALL
- If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
all the other internationalization variables.
- LC_COLLATE
- The POSIX standard specifies that this variable affects the
pattern matching to be used for the -name option. GNU find uses the
fnmatch(3) library function, and so support for LC_COLLATE
depends on the system library. This variable also affects the
interpretation of the response to -ok; while the LC_MESSAGES
variable selects the actual pattern used to interpret the response to
-ok, the interpretation of any bracket expressions in the pattern
will be affected by LC_COLLATE.
- LC_CTYPE
- This variable affects the treatment of character classes
used in regular expressions and also with the -name test, if the
system's fnmatch(3) library function supports this. This variable
also affects the interpretation of any character classes in the regular
expressions used to interpret the response to the prompt issued by
-ok. The LC_CTYPE environment variable will also affect
which characters are considered to be unprintable when filenames are
printed; see the section UNUSUAL FILENAMES.
- LC_MESSAGES
- Determines the locale to be used for internationalised
messages. If the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, this
also determines the interpretation of the response to the prompt made by
the -ok action.
- NLSPATH
- Determines the location of the internationalisation message
catalogues.
- PATH
- Affects the directories which are searched to find the
executables invoked by -exec, -execdir, -ok and
-okdir.
- POSIXLY_CORRECT
- Determines the block size used by -ls and
-fls. If POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, blocks are units of 512
bytes. Otherwise they are units of 1024 bytes.
- Setting this variable also turns off warning messages (that
is, implies -nowarn) by default, because POSIX requires that apart
from the output for -ok, all messages printed on stderr are
diagnostics and must result in a non-zero exit status.
- When POSIXLY_CORRECT is not set, -perm
+zzz is treated just like -perm /zzz if
+zzz is not a valid symbolic mode. When POSIXLY_CORRECT is
set, such constructs are treated as an error.
- When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, the response to the
prompt made by the -ok action is interpreted according to the
system's message catalogue, as opposed to according to find's own
message translations.
- TZ
- Affects the time zone used for some of the time-related
format directives of -printf and -fprintf.
- •
- Find files named core in or below the directory
/tmp and delete them.
$ find /tmp -name core -type f -print | xargs /bin/rm -f
Note that this will work incorrectly if there are any filenames containing
newlines, single or double quotes, or spaces.
- •
- Find files named core in or below the directory
/tmp and delete them, processing filenames in such a way that file
or directory names containing single or double quotes, spaces or newlines
are correctly handled.
$ find /tmp -name core -type f -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -f
The -name test comes before the -type test in order to avoid
having to call stat(2) on every file.
Note that there is still a race between the time
find traverses the
hierarchy printing the matching filenames, and the time the process executed
by
xargs works with that file.
- •
- Given that another program proggy pre-filters and
creates a huge NUL-separated list of files, process those as starting
points, and find all regular, empty files among them:
$ proggy | find -files0-from - -maxdepth 0 -type f -empty
The use of `-files0-from -` means to read the names of the
starting points from standard input, i.e., from the pipe; and
-maxdepth 0 ensures that only explicitly those entries are
examined without recursing into directories (in the case one of the
starting points is one).
- •
- Run file on every file in or below the current
directory.
$ find . -type f -exec file '{}' \;
Notice that the braces are enclosed in single quote marks to protect them
from interpretation as shell script punctuation. The semicolon is
similarly protected by the use of a backslash, though single quotes could
have been used in that case also.
In many cases, one might prefer the
`-exec ... +` or better
the
`-execdir ... +` syntax for performance and security
reasons.
- •
- Traverse the filesystem just once, listing set-user-ID
files and directories into /root/suid.txt and large files into
/root/big.txt.
$ find / \
\( -perm -4000 -fprintf /root/suid.txt '%#m %u %p\n' \) , \
\( -size +100M -fprintf /root/big.txt '%-10s %p\n' \)
This example uses the line-continuation character '\' on the first two lines
to instruct the shell to continue reading the command on the next
line.
- •
- Search for files in your home directory which have been
modified in the last twenty-four hours.
$ find $HOME -mtime 0
This command works this way because the time since each file was last
modified is divided by 24 hours and any remainder is discarded. That means
that to match -mtime 0, a file will have to have a
modification in the past which is less than 24 hours ago.
- •
- Search for files which are executable but not readable.
$ find /sbin /usr/sbin -executable \! -readable -print
- •
- Search for files which have read and write permission for
their owner, and group, but which other users can read but not write to.
$ find . -perm 664
Files which meet these criteria but have other permissions bits set (for
example if someone can execute the file) will not be matched.
- •
- Search for files which have read and write permission for
their owner and group, and which other users can read, without regard to
the presence of any extra permission bits (for example the executable
bit).
$ find . -perm -664
This will match a file which has mode 0777, for example.
- •
- Search for files which are writable by somebody (their
owner, or their group, or anybody else).
$ find . -perm /222
- •
- Search for files which are writable by either their owner
or their group.
$ find . -perm /220
$ find . -perm /u+w,g+w
$ find . -perm /u=w,g=w
All three of these commands do the same thing, but the first one uses the
octal representation of the file mode, and the other two use the symbolic
form. The files don't have to be writable by both the owner and group to
be matched; either will do.
- •
- Search for files which are writable by both their owner and
their group.
$ find . -perm -220
$ find . -perm -g+w,u+w
Both these commands do the same thing.
- •
- A more elaborate search on permissions.
$ find . -perm -444 -perm /222 \! -perm /111
$ find . -perm -a+r -perm /a+w \! -perm /a+x
These two commands both search for files that are readable for everybody
(-perm -444 or -perm -a+r), have at least one write bit set
(-perm /222 or -perm /a+w) but are not executable for
anybody (! -perm /111 or ! -perm /a+x respectively).
- •
- Copy the contents of /source-dir to
/dest-dir, but omit files and directories named .snapshot
(and anything in them). It also omits files or directories whose name ends
in `~', but not their contents.
$ cd /source-dir
$ find . -name .snapshot -prune -o \( \! -name '*~' -print0 \) \
| cpio -pmd0 /dest-dir
The construct
-prune -o \( ... -print0 \) is
quite common. The idea here is that the expression before -prune
matches things which are to be pruned. However, the -prune action
itself returns true, so the following -o ensures that the right
hand side is evaluated only for those directories which didn't get pruned
(the contents of the pruned directories are not even visited, so their
contents are irrelevant). The expression on the right hand side of the
-o is in parentheses only for clarity. It emphasises that the
-print0 action takes place only for things that didn't have
-prune applied to them. Because the default `and' condition between
tests binds more tightly than -o, this is the default anyway, but
the parentheses help to show what is going on.
- •
- Given the following directory of projects and their
associated SCM administrative directories, perform an efficient search for
the projects' roots:
$ find repo/ \
\( -exec test -d '{}/.svn' \; \
-or -exec test -d '{}/.git' \; \
-or -exec test -d '{}/CVS' \; \
\) -print -prune
Sample output:
repo/project1/CVS
repo/gnu/project2/.svn
repo/gnu/project3/.svn
repo/gnu/project3/src/.svn
repo/project4/.git
In this example, -prune prevents unnecessary descent into directories
that have already been discovered (for example we do not search
project3/src because we already found project3/.svn), but
ensures sibling directories (project2 and project3) are
found.
- •
- Search for several file types.
$ find /tmp -type f,d,l
Search for files, directories, and symbolic links in the directory
/tmp passing these types as a comma-separated list (GNU extension),
which is otherwise equivalent to the longer, yet more portable:
$ find /tmp \( -type f -o -type d -o -type l \)
- •
- Search for files with the particular name needle and
stop immediately when we find the first one.
$ find / -name needle -print -quit
- •
- Demonstrate the interpretation of the %f and
%h format directives of the -printf action for some
corner-cases. Here is an example including some output.
$ find . .. / /tmp /tmp/TRACE compile compile/64/tests/find -maxdepth 0 -printf '[%h][%f]\n'
[.][.]
[.][..]
[][/]
[][tmp]
[/tmp][TRACE]
[.][compile]
[compile/64/tests][find]
find exits with status 0 if all files are processed successfully, greater
than 0 if errors occur. This is deliberately a very broad description, but if
the return value is non-zero, you should not rely on the correctness of the
results of
find.
When some error occurs,
find may stop immediately, without completing all
the actions specified. For example, some starting points may not have been
examined or some pending program invocations for
-exec ... {} + or
-execdir ... {} + may not have been performed.
As of findutils-4.2.2, shell metacharacters (`*', `?' or `[]' for example) used
in filename patterns match a leading `.', because IEEE POSIX interpretation
126 requires this.
As of findutils-4.3.3,
-perm /000 now matches all files instead of
none.
Nanosecond-resolution timestamps were implemented in findutils-4.3.3.
As of findutils-4.3.11, the
-delete action sets
find's exit status
to a nonzero value when it fails. However,
find will not exit
immediately. Previously,
find's exit status was unaffected by the
failure of
-delete.
Feature |
Added in |
Also occurs in |
-files0-from |
4.9.0 |
|
-newerXY |
4.3.3 |
BSD |
-D |
4.3.1 |
|
-O |
4.3.1 |
|
-readable |
4.3.0 |
|
-writable |
4.3.0 |
|
-executable |
4.3.0 |
|
-regextype |
4.2.24 |
|
-exec ... + |
4.2.12 |
POSIX |
-execdir |
4.2.12 |
BSD |
-okdir |
4.2.12 |
|
-samefile |
4.2.11 |
|
-H |
4.2.5 |
POSIX |
-L |
4.2.5 |
POSIX |
-P |
4.2.5 |
BSD |
-delete |
4.2.3 |
|
-quit |
4.2.3 |
|
-d |
4.2.3 |
BSD |
-wholename |
4.2.0 |
|
-iwholename |
4.2.0 |
|
-ignore_readdir_race |
4.2.0 |
|
-fls |
4.0 |
|
-ilname |
3.8 |
|
-iname |
3.8 |
|
-ipath |
3.8 |
|
-iregex |
3.8 |
|
The syntax
-perm +MODE was removed in findutils-4.5.12, in favour of
-perm /MODE. The
+MODE syntax had been deprecated since
findutils-4.2.21 which was released in 2005.
The command
find . -name afile -o -name bfile -print will never print
afile because this is actually equivalent to
find . -name afile -o
\( -name bfile -a -print \). Remember that the precedence of
-a is
higher than that of
-o and when there is no operator specified between
tests,
-a is assumed.
$ find . -name *.c -print
find: paths must precede expression
find: possible unquoted pattern after predicate `-name'?
This happens when the shell could expand the pattern
*.c to more than one
file name existing in the current directory, and passing the resulting file
names in the command line to
find like this:
find . -name frcode.c locate.c word_io.c -print
That command is of course not going to work, because the
-name predicate
allows exactly only one pattern as argument. Instead of doing things this way,
you should enclose the pattern in quotes or escape the wildcard, thus allowing
find to use the pattern with the wildcard during the search for file
name matching instead of file names expanded by the parent shell:
$ find . -name '*.c' -print
$ find . -name \*.c -print
There are security problems inherent in the behaviour that the POSIX standard
specifies for
find, which therefore cannot be fixed. For example, the
-exec action is inherently insecure, and
-execdir should be used
instead.
The environment variable
LC_COLLATE has no effect on the
-ok
action.
GNU findutils online help:
<
https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/#get-help>
Report any translation bugs to <
https://translationproject.org/team/>
Report any other issue via the form at the GNU Savannah bug tracker:
General topics about the GNU findutils package are discussed at the
bug-findutils mailing list:
Copyright © 1990-2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU
GPL version 3 or later <
https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO
WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
chmod(1),
locate(1),
ls(1),
updatedb(1),
xargs(1),
lstat(2),
stat(2),
ctime(3)
fnmatch(3),
printf(3),
strftime(3),
locatedb(5),
regex(7)
Full documentation <
https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/find>
or available locally via:
info find