Table of Contents
- Abridged ‘find’ command examples
- Basic find command examples
- Find directories with the Unix find command
- Find files that don't match a pattern
- Finding files that contain text (find + grep)
- Acting on files you find (find + exec)
- Running the ls command on files you find
- Find and delete
- Find files with different file extensions
- Case-insensitive file searching
- Find files by modification time
- A command to find large files on MacOS, Unix, and Linux
- More find command resources
Linux/Unix FAQ: Can you share some Linux find
command examples?
Sure. The Linux find
command is very powerful. It can search the entire filesystem to find files and directories according to the search criteria you specify. Besides using the find
command to locate files, you can also use it to execute other Linux commands (grep
, mv
, rm
, etc.) on the files and directories that are found, which makes find
even more powerful.
In this article I’ll take a look at the most common uses of the find
command.
(this space intentionally
left blank for that long
“table of contents” over
there -->)
Back to top
Abridged ‘find’ command examples
If you just want to see some examples and skip the reading, here are a little more than thirty find
command examples to get you started. Almost every command is followed by a short description to explain the command; others are described more fully at the URLs shown:
basic 'find file' commands -------------------------- find / -name foo.txt -type f -print # full command find / -name foo.txt -type f # -print isn't necessary find / -name foo.txt # don't have to specify "type==file" find . -name foo.txt # search under the current dir find . -name "foo.*" # wildcard find . -name "*.txt" # wildcard find /users/al -name Cookbook -type d # search '/users/al' dir search multiple dirs -------------------- find /opt /usr /var -name foo.scala -type f # search multiple dirs case-insensitive searching -------------------------- find . -iname foo # find foo, Foo, FOo, FOO, etc. find . -iname foo -type d # same thing, but only dirs find . -iname foo -type f # same thing, but only files find files with different extensions ------------------------------------ find . -type f \( -name "*.c" -o -name "*.sh" \) # *.c and *.sh files find . -type f \( -name "*cache" -o -name "*xml" -o -name "*html" \) # three patterns find files that don't match a pattern (-not) -------------------------------------------- find . -type f -not -name "*.html" # find all files not ending in ".html" find files by text in the file (find + grep) -------------------------------------------- find . -type f -name "*.java" -exec grep -l StringBuffer {} \; # find StringBuffer in all *.java files find . -type f -name "*.java" -exec grep -il string {} \; # ignore case with -i option find . -type f -name "*.gz" -exec zgrep 'GET /foo' {} \; # search for a string in gzip'd files 5 lines before, 10 lines after grep matches ------------------------------------------- find . -type f -name "*.scala" -exec grep -B5 -A10 'null' {} \; (see https://alvinalexander.com/linux-unix/find-grep-print-lines-before-after-search-term) find files and act on them (find + exec) ---------------------------------------- find /usr/local -name "*.html" -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \; # change html files to mode 644 find htdocs cgi-bin -name "*.cgi" -type f -exec chmod 755 {} \; # change cgi files to mode 755 find . -name "*.pl" -exec ls -ld {} \; # run ls command on files found find and copy ------------- find . -type f -name "*.mp3" -exec cp {} /tmp/MusicFiles \; # cp *.mp3 files to /tmp/MusicFiles copy one file to many dirs -------------------------- find dir1 dir2 dir3 dir4 -type d -exec cp header.shtml {} \; # copy the file header.shtml to those dirs find and delete --------------- find . -type f -name "Foo*" -exec rm {} \; # remove all "Foo*" files under current dir find . -type d -name CVS -exec rm -r {} \; # remove all subdirectories named "CVS" under current dir find files by modification time ------------------------------- find . -mtime 1 # 24 hours find . -mtime -7 # last 7 days find . -mtime -7 -type f # just files find . -mtime -7 -type d # just dirs find files by modification time using a temp file ------------------------------------------------- touch 09301330 poop # 1) create a temp file with a specific timestamp find . -mnewer poop # 2) returns a list of new files rm poop # 3) rm the temp file find with time: this works on mac os x -------------------------------------- find / -newerct '1 minute ago' -print find and tar ------------ find . -type f -name "*.java" | xargs tar cvf myfile.tar find . -type f -name "*.java" | xargs tar rvf myfile.tar (see https://alvinalexander.com/blog/post/linux-unix/using-find-xargs-tar-create-huge-archive-cygwin-linux-unix for more information) find, tar, and xargs -------------------- find . -name -type f '*.mp3' -mtime -180 -print0 | xargs -0 tar rvf music.tar (-print0 helps handle spaces in filenames) (see https://alvinalexander.com/mac-os-x/mac-backup-filename-directories-spaces-find-tar-xargs) find and pax (instead of xargs and tar) --------------------------------------- find . -type f -name "*html" | xargs tar cvf jw-htmlfiles.tar - find . -type f -name "*html" | pax -w -f jw-htmlfiles.tar (see https://alvinalexander.com/blog/post/linux-unix/using-pax-instead-of-tar)
On a related note, don’t forget the locate
command. It keeps a database on your Unix/Linux system to help find files very fast:
locate command -------------- locate tomcat.sh # search the entire filesystem for 'tomcat.sh' (uses the locate database) locate -i spring.jar # case-insensitive search
If you know of any more good find
commands to share, please leave a note in the Comments section below.
The remaining sections on this page describe more fully the commands just shown.
Back to topBasic find command examples
This first Linux find
example searches through the root filesystem ("/") for the file named Chapter1. If it finds the file, it prints the location to the screen.
find / -name Chapter1 -type f -print
On Linux systems and modern Unix system you no longer need the -print
option at the end of the find
command, so you can issue it like this:
find / -name Chapter1 -type f
The -type f
option here tells the find command to return only files. If you don’t use it, the find
command will returns files, directories, and other things like named pipes and device files that match the name pattern you specify. If you don't care about that, just leave the -type f
option off your command.
This next find
command searches through only the /usr and /home directories for any file named Chapter1.txt:
find /usr /home -name Chapter1.txt -type f
To search in the current directory — and all subdirectories — just use the .
character to reference the current directory in your find
commands, like this:
find . -name Chapter1 -type f
This next example searches through the /usr directory for all files that begin with the letters Chapter, followed by anything else. The filename can end with any other combination of characters. It will match filenames such as Chapter, Chapter1, Chapter1.bad, Chapter-in-life, etc.:
find /usr -name "Chapter*" -type f
This next command searches through the /usr/local directory for files that end with the extension .html. These file locations are then printed to the screen:
find /usr/local -name "*.html" -type fBack to top
Find directories with the Unix find command
Every option you just saw for finding files can also be used on directories. Just replace the -f
option with a -d
option. For instance, to find all directories named build under the current directory, use this command:
find . -type d -name buildBack to top
Find files that don't match a pattern
To find all files that don't match a filename pattern, use the -not
argument of the find command, like this:
find . -type f -not -name "*.html"
That generates a list of all files beneath the current directory whose filename DOES NOT end in .html, so it matches files like *.txt, *.jpg, and so on.
Back to topFinding files that contain text (find + grep)
You can combine the Linux find and grep commands to powerfully search for text strings in many files.
This next command shows how to find all files beneath the current directory that end with the extension .java
, and contain the characters StringBuffer
. The -l
argument to the grep
command tells it to just print the name of the file where a match is found, instead of printing all the matches themselves:
find . -type f -name "*.java" -exec grep -l StringBuffer {} \;
(Those last few characters are required any time you want to exec
a command on the files that are found. I find it helpful to think of them as a placeholder for each file that is found.)
This next example is similar, but here I use the -i
argument to the grep
command, telling it to ignore the case of the characters string
, so it will find files that contain string
, String
, STRING
, etc.:
find . -type f -name "*.java" -exec grep -il string {} \;Back to top
Acting on files you find (find + exec)
This command searches through the /usr/local
directory for files that end with the extension .html
. When these files are found, their permission is changed to mode 644 (rw-r--r--).
find /usr/local -name "*.html" -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
This find command searches through the htdocs
and cgi-bin
directories for files that end with the extension .cgi
. When these files are found, their permission is changed to mode 755 (rwxr-xr-x). This example shows that the find command can easily search through multiple sub-directories (htdocs, cgi-bin) at one time:
find htdocs cgi-bin -name "*.cgi" -type f -exec chmod 755 {} \;Back to top
Running the ls command on files you find
From time to time I run the find command with the ls
command so I can get detailed information about files the find command locates. To get started, this find command will find all the *.pl files (Perl files) beneath the current directory:
find . -name "*.pl"
In my current directory, the output of this command looks like this:
./news/newsbot/old/3filter.pl ./news/newsbot/tokenParser.pl ./news/robonews/makeListOfNewsURLs.pl
That's nice, but what if I want to see the last modification time of these files, or their filesize? No problem, I just add the ls -ld
command to my find command, like this:
find . -name "*.pl" -exec ls -ld {} \;
This results in this very different output:
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root root 2907 Jun 15 2002 ./news/newsbot/old/3filter.pl -rwxrwxr-x 1 root root 336 Jun 17 2002 ./news/newsbot/tokenParser.pl -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2371 Jun 17 2002 ./news/robonews/makeListOfNewsURLs.pl
The "-l" flag of the ls command tells ls to give me a "long listing" of each file, while the -d flag is extremely useful in this case; it tells ls to give me the same output for a directory. Normally if you use the ls command on a directory, ls will list the contents of the directory, but if you use the -d option, you'll get one line of information, as shown above.
Back to topFind and delete
Be very careful with these next two commands. If you type them in wrong, or make the wrong assumptions about what you're searching for, you can delete a lot of files very fast. Make sure you have backups and all that, you have been warned.
Here's how to find all files beneath the current directory that begin with the letters 'Foo' and delete them.
find . -type f -name "Foo*" -exec rm {} \;
This one is even more dangerous. It finds all directories named CVS, and deletes them and their contents. Just like the previous command, be very careful with this command, it is dangerous(!), and not recommended for newbies, or if you don't have a backup.
find . -type d -name CVS -exec rm -r {} \;
Find files with different file extensions
The syntax to find multiple filename extensions with one command looks like this:
find . -type f \( -name "*.c" -o -name "*.sh" \)
Just keep adding more "-o" (or) options for each filename extension. Here's a link to
Back to topCase-insensitive file searching
To perform a case-insensitive search with the Unix/Linux find command, use the -iname
option instead of -name
. For example, if you want to search for all files and directories named foo
, FOO
, or any other combination of uppercase and lowercase characters beneath the current directory, use this command:
find . -iname foo
If you’re just interested in directories, search like this:
find . -iname foo -type d
And if you’re just looking for files, search like this:
find . -iname foo -type fBack to top
Find files by modification time
To find all files and directories that have been modified in the last seven days, use this find
command:
find . -mtime -7
To limit the output to just files, add the -type f
option as shown earlier:
find . -mtime -7 -type f
and to show just directories:
find . -mtime -7 -type d
A command to find large files on MacOS, Unix, and Linux
I just saw this find
command at this URL that helps you find large files on MacOS, Unix, and Linux systems:
find / -type f -size +100000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $9 ": " $5 }'
On a Mac there’s actually an easier way to do this:
- Click the Apple icon, then select About This Mac
- Click the Storage tab on the dialog that comes up
- Click the Manage... button in that tab
- When the next window comes up, click the Review Files button under the Reduce Clutter section
That brings up another window that gives you various ways to find large files on a MacOS system.
Back to topMore find command resources
If you’re just looking for a file by name, and you want to be able to find that file even faster than you can with the find command, take a look at the Linux locate command. The locate command keeps filenames in a database, and can find them very fast.
For more details on the find command, check out our online version of the find man page.
Also, if you have any favorite Linux and Unix find commands you’d like to share, please use the comment form below.
Back to top
Comments
Used find on bugzilla directories
I just had a problem with a Bugzilla installation (on an intranet), and finally gave up on trying to fix all the permission problems, and just made all the bugzilla subdirectories 775 like this:
find bugzilla -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
Here 'bugzilla' was a subdirectory of my current directory.
deleting files with the find command
I was using "find * -mtime +63 -exec rm{} \;
However there are too many files in the directory.
find, xargs, and rm
I've always been lazy in this situation and done something as follows. First, create a list of all the files you want to remove, putting that list into a file:
Then follow this with a shell
for
loop, like this:But a quick warning: I haven't tested that for syntax errors, but I think it's right.
But, even better, I've used find with xargs before to create large tar backup archives, and in the
xargs
man page docs I just saw these examples related to removing files. Hopefully these examples will help:No matter, which approach, be careful, and try a test first (maybe using the
echo
command) to make sure it works was expected..case sensitive?
Is this command case sensitive?
How about if I want to find directories with upper cases only?
How to ignore case
I'll add a new section to this article with this update, but to perform a case-insensitive search, use the
-iname
option instead of-name
. So, to search for all files and directories namedfoo
,FOO
, or any other combination of uppercase and lowercase characters beneath the current directory, use this command:In response to the second question, to search for directories with uppercase characters only I'd need to know a little more about what you're looking for, but something like this might help get you started:
The
-type d
option tells find to just look for directories, and the wildcard pattern"[A-Z]*"
says "Search for any directory whose name contains one or more uppercase characters."Awesome content.
Had just what I wanted and straight to the point
good one!!!
good one!!!
Very helpful
Was very helpful. Straight to the point.
This is amazingly simple and
This is amazingly simple and very helpful..A Very good document!!!!Thanks
These information's are very
These information's are very useful.. Thanks
how to set find to be QUIET about errors?
Is there any way to set a "-quiet" type flag to ignore all the error lines? I get more "Permission denied" lines than I do results to my find query. I don't see anything in the man page. I thought maybe I could run the output through grep -v "Permission denied" but that fails to work.
you forgot to mention the -ls flag
Often I'd like to know exactly WHERE the files that get found reside. the -print (default) command only gives the file name. The -ls flag prints out a bunch of data, including size and full path. You can then use sed/awk (if you know how - I suck at this too) to pull out specific data from what find returns.
Another cool thing to do is run your find output through wc -l to count all the found files. e.g.:
find ~music -type f -iname *.mp3 | wc -l
will count all the mp3 files in the music user's home and subdirs.
There is a -[no]warn flag,
There is a -[no]warn flag, though I've never used it. The problem with using grep in this case is that the errors are probably coming out of find on the STDERR stream instead of STDOUT, so you'll need to get rid of them something like this:
If you haven't used it before, the "2>" symbol lets you redirect STDERR output.
Cheers.
Thanks, you're right,
Thanks, you're right, I totally forgot to include an "ls" example. I'll try to add one here this morning. Usually I use ls with the -ld option, like this:
I'll add this next. Thanks again.
Ultimate
Simply ultimate..quite impressed by the way you present the usage of the command. Well done.
Thank you!
Objective and minimalist. :-)
Thank you.
Thanks :)
Thanks :)
find
Can someone help me in find files with multiple extensions like .sh or .c or .txt
for ex-
find . -name "*.(c|sh|txt)"
find with multiple filename extensions
The syntax to find multiple filename extensions with one command looks like this:
Just keep adding more "-o" (or) options for each filename extension. Here's a link to a longer example I wrote.
How to find a directory in current directory &all subdirectory
Hi
Can anyone help me to find a directory using "find command" and list the contents of that directory using ls command.
Eg. Suppose say I want to find the directory called "mosra" in the present workign directory. This directory may be present anywhere in the path and I want to list ONLY the directories present in that "mosra" directory.
Working Dir $ pwd
/nfs/iind/home/sshirnix/public/scripts/perl_scripts
Working Dir $ find ./ -name mosra -type d
./aging/hspice/mosra
I tried this command
find ./ -name mosra -type d -printf %P\\n -exec ls {} \;
But it lists out file and directores both
What I want is to list out the ONLY directories in mosra directory above....
Please help me on this
Thanks
Sudhakar
Finding a directory
If I understand the question, this should work:
However ... a problem with that command is that it's like issuing this command from the directory above the
mosra
directory:That command will list all of the files in the mosra folder, which is probably what you're seeing. To eliminate the output of those filenames, add the
-d
flag to yourls
command:However, at this point, unless you want more detailed information about the
mosra
folder, such as anls -l
command, there's no point in usingls
; just use this command:(If you're on an older Unix system you may also need the
-print
argument.)I hope that helps.
Find command example
Hello Alvin,
Thank you very much for the reply and for yor time.
I am grateful to you for your reply.
The command:
find . -name mosra -type d -exec ls {} \;
lists all the directories and files in mosra directory found. However I want to list ONLY the directories that are present in the mosra directory once it is found.
The command:
find . -name mosra -type d -exec ls -d {} \;
gives the relative path of the mosra directory not the contents in mosra directory. In fact I want only the directories present in the mosra not the files.
Basically I want the directories present in mosra after finding it in the current path.
Hope I am clear in presenting my requirements..
Sudhakar
One find command inside another
Depending on your exact needs you may want to do that in a couple of lines in a shell script, but you can also get a listing of all directories under the mosra directory by executing one
find
command inside the other, like this: