⊕ Usage

find [ files-or-directories ] [ options ]

⊕ Purpose

 

Find files matching specified name patterns, or having given attributes.

⊕ Major options

 

See the text for a description of the numbers mask and n that follow some of these options:

 

Select files with access times of n days.

 

Select files with inode-change times of n days.

 

Follow symbolic links.

 

Select files in group g (a name or numeric group ID).

 

Select files with n hard links.

 

Produce a listing similar to the ls long form, rather than just filenames.

 

Select files with modification times of n days.

 

Select files matching the shell wildcard pattern (quoted to protect it from shell interpretation).

 

Select files matching the specified octal permission mask.

 

Do not descend recursively into directory trees.

 

Select files of size n.

 

Select files of type t, a single letter: d (directory), f (file), or l (symbolic link). There are letters for other file types, but they are not needed often.

 

Select files owned by user u (a name or numeric user ID).

⊕ Behavior

 

find descends into directory trees, finding all files in those trees. It then applies selectors defined by its command-line options to choose files for further action, normally printing their names or producing an ls-like verbose listing.

⊕ Caveats

 

Because of find's default directory descent, it potentially can take a long time to run in a large filesystem.

⊕ Remark

 

find's output is not sorted.

 

find has additional options that can be used to carry out arbitrary actions on the selected files. Because this is potentially dangerous, we do not recommend their use except in tightly controlled situations.