find¶

To find files following symlinks (otherwise the symlinks are not followed)

find -L . -type f

To find files by case-insensitive extension (ex: .jpg, .JPG, .jpG)

find . -iname "*.jpg"

To find directories

find . -type d

To find files

find . -type f

To find files by octal permission

find . -type f -perm 777

To find files with setuid bit set

find . -xdev \( -perm -4000 \) -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -l

To find files newer than 1 day old and copy elsewhere (remove -p flag in xargs to not be asked)

find . -type f -ctime -1 -print0 | xargs -0 -p cp -t <dir>

or

find . -type f -ctime -1 -print0 | xargs -0 -p -J % cp % <dir>

To find files with extension '.txt' and remove them

find ./path/ -name '*.txt' -delete

To find files with tilde as postfix and remove them

find ./path/ -name '*~' -delete

To find files with extension '.txt' and dump their contents

find ./path/ -name '*.txt' -exec cat '{}' \;

To find files with extension '.txt' and look for a string into them

find ./path/ -name '*.txt' | xargs grep 'string'

To find files with size bigger than 5 Mebibyte and sort them by size

find . -size +5M -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -Ssh | sort -z

To find files bigger than 2 Megabyte and list them

find . -type f -size +200000000c -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $9 ": " $5 }'

To find files modified more than 7 days ago and list file information

find . -type f -mtime +7d -ls

To find symlinks owned by a user and list file information

find . -type l -user <username-or-userid> -ls

To search for and delete empty directories

find . -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \;

To search for directories named build at a max depth of 2 directories

find . -maxdepth 2 -name build -type d

To search all files who are not in .git directory

find . ! -iwholename '*.git*' -type f

To find all files that have the same node (hard link) as MY_FILE_HERE

find . -type f -samefile MY_FILE_HERE 2>/dev/null

To find all files in the current directory and modify their permissions

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

To find all files changed in last 2 days

find . -type f -ctime -48h
find . -type f -ctime -2

Or created in last 2 days

find . -type f -Btime -2

Or accessed in last 2 days

find . -type f -atime -2

To find and rename (imperfect) all files and dirs that have a comma in the

name (dry-run):

find . -name '*,*' | while read f; do echo mv "$f" "${f//,/}"; done

To find all broken links. Note -L returns a file unless it is a broken link

find -L /usr/ports/packages -type l

To find and run multiple shell commands (without multiple execs)

See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5119946/find-exec-with-multiple-commands

find . -type f -exec sh -c "echo '{}'; cat '{}';" \;

To find files that are newer than a file

find <path> -newer <target-file>