Useful examples of Linux find

linux_find.md

Examples of Linux find

List all files in current and sub directories

Find recursively all files and directories in the current path:

find

Search specific directory or path

As above but in the subdirectory:

find mydir

Limit depth of directory traversal

find mydir -maxdepth 1 -name \*.php

Invert match

find mydir -not -name file.txt

find mydir ! -name file.php

Combine multiple search criteria

"Not" operator:

     find mydir -name 'abc\*' ! -name '\*.php'

"Or" operator:   

    find -name '\*.php' -o -name '\*.txt'

Search only files or only directories

Find only files:

     find dir -type f -name file.txt

Find only directories:  

    find dir -type d -name file.txt

Search multiple directories

find dir1 dir2 type f -name \*.txt 

Find hidden files

find ~ -type f -name .bash*

Find files with certain permissions

find dir -type f -perm 0664

find . -type f ! -perm 0777

Find files with sgid or suid bits set

 find / -perm 2644

 find / -maxdepth 2 -perm /u=s 2>/dev/null

Find readonly files

 find /etc -maxdepth 1 -perm /u=r

Find executable files

find /bin -maxdepth 2 -perm /a=x

Find files owned to particular user

find . -user bob

find . -user bob -name *txt

Search files belonging to a group

find /var/www -group developer

find ~ -name hidden.php

Find files modified N days back

find / -mtime 50

Find files accessed in last N days

find / -atime 50

Find files modified in a range of days

Find all files that were modified between 50 to 100 days ago:

    find / -mtime +50 –mtime -100

Find files changed in last N minutes.

Find files modified within the last 1 hour:

find /home/bob -cmin -60

Files modified in last hour

To find all the files which are modified in last 1 hour:

    find / -mmin -60

Find Accessed Files in Last 1 Hour

find / -amin -60

Find files of given size

Search files and directories based on size. To find all 50MB files, use:

find / -size 50M

Find files in a size range

To find all the files which are greater than 50MB and less than 100MB.

find / -size +50M -size -100M

Find largest and smallest files

The following command will display the 5 largest file in the 
current directory and its subdirectory. This may take a while to execute 
depending on the total number of files the command has to process:

    find . -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n -r | head -5
    
Similary when sorted in ascending order, it would show the smallest files first:

    find . -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n | head -5

Find empty files and directories

Find empty directories and files:       

    find /tmp -type f -empty

List out the found files

find . -exec ls -ld {} \;

Delete all matching files or directories

find /tmp -type f -name "\*.txt" -exec rm -f {} \;

Lets take another example where we want to delete files larger than 100MB:

    find /home/bob/dir -type f -name \*.log -size +10M -exec rm -f {} \;