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FIND(1) FIND(1)
NAME
find - search for files in a directory hierarchy
SYNOPSIS
find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the GNU version of find. GNU find searches the direc-
tory tree rooted at each given file name 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 you are using find in an environment where security is important (for example if
you are using it to seach 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.
OPTIONS
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 ‘!’.
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 three ‘real’ options ‘-H’, ‘-L’ and ‘-P’ must appear before the first
path name, if at all.
-P Never follow symbolic links. This is the default behaviour. When find
examines or prints information a file, 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 dis-
covers 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). Using -L causes the
-lname and -ilname predicates always to return false.
-H Do not follow symbolic links, except while processing the command line argu-
ments. When find examines or prints information about files, the informa-
tion 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 sym-
bolic 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 proper-
ties 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 -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).
EXPRESSIONS
The expression is made up of options (which affect overall operation rather than
the processing of a specific file, and always return true), tests (which return a
true or false value), and actions (which have side effects and return a true or
false value), all separated by operators. -and is assumed where the operator is
omitted. If the expression contains no actions other than -prune, -print is per-
formed on all files for which the expression is true.
OPTIONS
All options always return true. Except for -follow and -daystart, they always take
effect, rather than being processed only when their place in the expression is
reached. Therefore, for clarity, it is best to place them at the beginning of the
expression. A warning is issued if you don’t do this.
-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.
-depth Process each directory’s contents before the directory itself.
-d A synonym for -depth, for compatibility with FreeBSD, NetBSD, MacOS X and
OpenBSD.
-follow
Deprecated; use the -L option instead. Dereference symbolic links. Implies
-noleaf. 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 -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.
-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 directo-
ries 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).
-maxdepth levels
Descend at most levels (a non-negative integer) levels of directories below
the command line arguments. ‘-maxdepth 0’ means only apply the tests and
actions to the command line arguments.
-mindepth levels
Do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than levels (a non-negative
integer). ‘-mindepth 1’ means process all files except the command line
arguments.
-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 filesys-
tems 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 nor-
mal 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.
-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.
-xdev Don’t descend directories on other filesystems.
TESTS
Numeric arguments can be specified as
+n for greater than n,
-n for less than n,
n for exactly n.
-amin n
File was last accessed n minutes ago.
-anewer file
File was last accessed more recently than file was modified. If file is a
symbolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in effect, the access
time of the file it points to is always used.
-atime n
File was last accessed n*24 hours ago. When find figures out how many
24-hour preiods ago the file was last accessed, any fractional part is
ignored, so to match -atime +1, a file has to have been modified at least
two days ago.
-cmin n
File’s status was last changed n minutes ago.
-cnewer file
File’s status was last changed more recently than file was modified. If
file is a symbolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in effect, the
status-change time of the file it points to is always used.
-ctime n
File’s status was last changed 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.
-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 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. In
these patterns, unlike filename expansion by the shell, an initial ’.’ can
be matched by ’*’. That is, find -name *bar will match the file ‘.foobar’.
-inum n
File has inode number n. It is normally easier to use the -samefile test
instead.
-ipath pattern
Behaves in the same way as -iwholename. This option is deprecated, so
please do not use it.
-iregex pattern
Like -regex, but the match is case insensitive.
-iwholename pattern
Like -wholename, but the match is case insensitive.
-links n
File has n 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 n minutes ago.
-mtime n
File’s data was last modified 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. The metacharacters (‘*’, ‘?’, and ‘[]’) match a ‘.’
at the start of the base name (this is a change in findutils-4.2.2; see sec-
tion STANDARDS CONFORMANCE below). To ignore a directory and the files
under it, use -prune; see an example in the description of -wholename.
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.
-newer file
File was modified more recently than file. If file is a symbolic link and
the -H option or the -L option is in effect, the modification time of the
file it points to is always used.
-nouser
No user corresponds to file’s numeric user ID.
-nogroup
No group corresponds to file’s numeric group ID.
-path pattern
See -wholename. The predicate -path is also supported by HP-UX find.
-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 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 sym-
bolic mode. See the EXAMPLES section for some illustrative examples.
-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 regu-
lar expressions understood by find follow the conventions for the re_match
system library function where this is present (i.e. on systems using the GNU
C Library). On other systems, the implementation within Gnulib is used; by
default, Gnulib provides ‘‘basic’’ regular expressions.
-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 n units of space. 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 Kilobytes (units of 1024 bytes)
‘M’ for Megabytes (units of 1048576 bytes)
‘G’ for Gigabytes (units of 1073741824 bytes)
The size does not count indirect blocks, but it does count blocks in sparse
files that are not actually allocated. Bear in mind that the ‘%k’ and ‘%b’
format specifiers of -printf handle sparse files differently. The ‘b’ suf-
fix always denotes 512-byte blocks and never 1 Kilobyte blocks, which is
different to the behaviour of -ls.
-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 (never true if the -L option or the -follow option is
in effect, unless the symbolic link is broken).
s socket
D door (Solaris)
-uid n File’s numeric user ID is n.
-used n
File was last accessed n days after its status was last changed.
-user uname
File is owned by user uname (numeric user ID allowed).
-wholename pattern
File name matches shell pattern pattern. The metacharacters do not treat
‘/’ or ‘.’ specially; so, for example,
find . -wholename ’./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. 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 some-
thing like this:
find . -wholename ’./src/emacs’ -prune -o -print
-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 scontext
--context scontext
(SELinux only) File has the security context scontext.
ACTIONS
-delete
Delete files; true if removal succeeded. If the removal failed, an error
message is issued.
-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 pro-
tect them from expansion by the shell. See the EXAMPLES section for exam-
ples 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 option;
you should use the -execdir option instead.
-exec command {} +
This variant of the -exec option 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. The command is executed in the starting direc-
tory.
-execdir command ;
-execdir command {} +
Like -exec, but the specified command is run from the subdirectory contain-
ing the matched file, which is not normally the directory in which you
started find. 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 option, 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 refer-
ence the current directory; otherwise, an attacker can run any commands they
like by leaving an appropriately-named file in a directory in which you will
run -execdir.
-fls file
True; like -ls but write to file like -fprint. The output file is always
created, even if the predicate is never matched.
-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.
-fprint0 file
True; like -print0 but write to file like -fprint. The output file is
always created, even if the predicate is never matched.
-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.
-ok command ;
Like -exec but ask the user first (on the standard input); if the response
does not start with ‘y’ or ‘Y’, do not run the command, and return false.
-print True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed by a new-
line. 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’.
-okdir command ;
Like -execdir but ask the user first (on the standard input); if the
response does not start with ‘y’ or ‘Y’, do not run the command, and return
false.
-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’ 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.
\ 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’ func-
tion.
%Ak File’s last access time in the format specified by k, which is either
‘@’ or a directive for the C ‘strftime’ function. The possible val-
ues for k are listed below; some of them might not be available on
all systems, due to differences in ‘strftime’ between systems.
@ seconds since Jan. 1, 1970, 00:00 GMT.
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..61)
T time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss)
+ Date and time, separated by ’+’, for example
‘2004-04-28+22:22:05’. The time is given in the current
timezone (which may be affected by setting the TZ environment
variable). This is a GNU extension.
X locale’s time representation (H:M:S)
Z time zone (e.g., EDT), or nothing if no time zone is deter-
minable
Date fields:
a locale’s abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
A locale’s full weekday name, variable length (Sunday..Satur-
day)
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)
d day of month (01..31)
D date (mm/dd/yy)
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 File’s size in 512-byte blocks (rounded up).
%c File’s last status change time in the format returned by the C
‘ctime’ 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 command
line argument.
%D The device number on which the file exists (the st_dev field of
struct stat), in decimal.
%f File’s name with any leading directories removed (only the last ele-
ment).
%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 Leading directories of file’s name (all but the last element). If
the file name contains no slashes (since it is in the current direc-
tory) the %h specifier expands to ".".
%H Command line argument under which file was found.
%i File’s inode number (in decimal).
%k The amount of disk space used for this file in 1K blocks (rounded
up). This is different from %s/1024 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 ’tradi-
tional’ numbers which most Unix implementations use, but if your par-
ticular 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’).
%n Number of hard links to file.
%p File’s name.
%P File’s name with the name of the command line argument under which it
was found removed.
%s File’s size in bytes.
%t File’s last modification time in the format returned by the C ‘ctime’
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 symlinks: L=loop, N=nonexistent
%Z (SELinux only) file’s security context.
A ‘%’ character followed by any other character is discarded (but the other
character is printed).
The %m and %d directives support the # , 0 and + flags, but the other direc-
tives 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.
-prune If -depth is not given, true; if the file is a directory, do not descend
into it.
If -depth is given, false; no effect.
-quit Exit immediately. No child proceses will be left running, but no more paths
specified on the command line will be processed. For example, find /tmp/foo
/tmp/bar -print -quit will print only /tmp/foo. Any command lines which
have been built up with -execdir ... {} + will be invoked before find exits.
The exit status may or may not be zero, depending on whether an error has
already occurred.
-ls True; list current file in ‘ls -dils’ format on standard output. The block
counts are of 1K blocks, unless the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is
set, in which case 512-byte blocks are used.
OPERATORS
Listed in order of decreasing precedence:
( expr )
Force precedence.
! expr True if expr is false.
-not expr
Same as ! expr, but not POSIX compliant.
expr1 expr2
Two expressions in a row are taken to be joined with an implied "and"; 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 dis-
carded; 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.
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
The following options are specified in the POSIX standard (IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003
Edition):
-H This option is supported.
-L This option is supported.
-name This option is supported, but POSIX conformance depends on the POSIX confor-
mance of the system’s fnmatch(3) library function. As of findutils-4.2.2,
shell metacharacters (’*’. ’?’ or ’[]’ for example) will 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.
-ok Supported. Interpretation of the response is not locale-dependent (see
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES).
-newer Supported. If the file specified is a symbolic link, it is always derefer-
enced. This is a change from previous behaviour, which used to take the
relevant time from the symbolic link; see the HISTORY section below.
Other predicates
The predicates ‘-atime’, ‘-ctime’, ‘-depth’, ‘-group’, ‘-links’, ‘-mtime’,
‘-nogroup’, ‘-nouser’, ‘-perm’, ‘-print’, ‘-prune’, ‘-size’, ‘-user’ and
‘-xdev’, are all supported.
The POSIX standard specifies parentheses ‘(’, ‘)’, negation ‘!’ and the ‘and’ and
‘or’ operators (‘-a’, ‘-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
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.
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 appropri-
ate. 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 comatibility with various BSD systems, but you
should use the POSIX-compliant predicate -depth instead.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
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.
POSIX also specifies that the ‘LC_COLLATE’ environment variable affects the
interpretation of the user’s response to the query issued by ‘-ok’, but this
is not the case for GNU find.
LC_CTYPE
This variable affects the treatment of character classes used with the
‘-name’ option, if the system’s fnmatch(3) library function supports this.
It has no effect on the behaviour of the ‘-ok’ expression.
LC_MESSAGES
Determines the locale to be used for internationalised messages.
NLSPATH
Determines the location of the internationalisation message catalogues.
PATH Affects the directores which are searched to find the executables invoked by
‘-exec’ and ‘-ok’.
POSIXLY_CORRECT
Determines the block size used by ‘-ls’.
TZ Affects the time zone used for some of the time-related format directives of
-printf and -fprintf.
EXAMPLES
find /tmp -name core -type f -print | xargs /bin/rm -f
Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them. Note that
this will work incorrectly if there are any filenames containing newlines, single
or double quotes, or spaces.
find /tmp -name core -type f -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -f
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. The -name test comes before the
-type test in order to avoid having to call stat(2) on every file.
find . -type f -exec file â€â€™{}â€â€™ \;
Runs ‘file’ on every file in or below the current directory. 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 ’;’ could have been used in that case also.
find / ( -perm +4000 -fprintf /root/suid.txt â€â€™%#m %u %p\nâ€â€™ ) , \
( -size +100M -fprintf /root/big.txt â€â€™%-10s %p\nâ€â€™ )
Traverse the filesystem just once, listing setuid files and directories into
/root/suid.txt and large files into /root/big/txt.
find $HOME -mtime 0
Search for files in your home directory which have been modified in the last
twenty-four hours. This command works this way because the time since each file
was last accessed is divided by 24 hours and any remainder is discarded. That
means that to match -atime 0, a file will have to have a modification in the past
which is less than 24 hours ago.
find . -perm 664
Search for files which have read and write permission for their owner, and group,
but which the rest of the world can read but not write to. Files which meet these
criteria but have other permissions bits set (for example if someone can execute
the file) will not be matched.
find . -perm -664
Search for files which have read and write permission for their owner, and group,
but which the rest of the world can read but not write to, without regard to the
presence of any extra permission bits (for example the executable bit). This will
match a file which has mode 0777, for example.
find . -perm +222
Search for files which are writeable by somebody (their owner, or their group, or
anybody else).
find . -perm +022
find . -perm +g+w,o+w
find . -perm +g=w,o=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. These
commands all search for files which are writeable by either their owner or their
group. The files don’t have to be writeable by both the owner and group to be
matched; either will do.
find . -perm -022
find . -perm -g+w,o+w
Both these commands do the same thing; search for files which are writeable by both
their owner and their group.
EXIT STATUS
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.
SEE ALSO
locate(1), locatedb(5), updatedb(1), xargs(1), fnmatch(3), regex(7), stat(2),
lstat(2), ls(1), printf(3), strftime(3), ctime(3), Finding Files (on-line in Info,
or printed),
HISTORY
As of findutils-4.2.2, shell metacharacters (’*’. ’?’ or ’[]’ for example) used in
filename patterns will match a leading ’.’, because IEEE POSIX interpretation 126
requires this.
BUGS
There are security problems inherent in the behaviour that the POSIX standard spec-
ifies for find, which therefore cannot be fixed. For example, the -exec action is
inherently insecure, and -execdir should be used instead. Please see Finding Files
for more information.
The best way to report a bug is to use the form at http://savan-
nah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils. The reason for this is that you will then be
able to track progress in fixing the problem. Other comments about find(1) and
about the findutils package in general can be sent to the bug-findutils mailing
list. To join the list, send email to bug-findutils-request AT gnu.org.
FIND(1)
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