This is a basic usage of the find command. This example finds all files
with name — MyCProgram.c in the current directory and all it's
sub-directories.
# find -name "MyCProgram.c"
./backup/MyCProgram.c
./MyCProgram.c
2. Find Files Using Name and Ignoring Case
This is a basic usage of the find command. This example finds all files
with name — MyCProgram.c (ignoring the case) in the current directory
and all it's sub-directories.
# find -iname "MyCProgram.c"
./mycprogram.c
./backup/mycprogram.c
./backup/MyCProgram.c
./MyCProgram.c
3. Limit Search To Specific Directory Level Using mindepth and maxdepth
Find the passwd file under all sub-directories starting from root directory.
# find / -name passwd
./usr/share/doc/nss_ldap-253/pam.d/passwd
./usr/bin/passwd
./etc/pam.d/passwd
./etc/passwd
Find the passwd file under root and one level down. (i.e root — level 1,
and one sub-directory — level 2)
# find -maxdepth 2 -name passwd
./etc/passwd
Find the passwd file under root and two levels down. (i.e root — level
1, and two sub-directories — level 2 and 3 )
# find / -maxdepth 3 -name passwd
./usr/bin/passwd
./etc/pam.d/passwd
./etc/passwd
Find the password file between sub-directory level 2 and 4.
# find -mindepth 3 -maxdepth 5 -name passwd
./usr/bin/passwd
./etc/pam.d/passwd
4. Executing Commands on the Files Found by the Find Command.
In the example below, the find command calculates the md5sum of all the
files with the name MyCProgram.c (ignoring case). {} is replaced by the
current file name.
# find -iname "MyCProgram.c" -exec md5sum {} \;
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e ./mycprogram.c
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e ./backup/mycprogram.c
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e ./backup/MyCProgram.c
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e ./MyCProgram.c
5. Inverting the match.
Shows the files or directories whose name are not MyCProgram.c .Since
the maxdepth is 1, this will look only under current directory.
# find -maxdepth 1 -not -iname "MyCProgram.c"
./MybashProgram.sh
./create_sample_files.sh
./backup
./Program.c
6. Finding Files by its inode Number.
Every file has an unique inode number, using that we can identify that
file. Create two files with similar name. i.e one file with a space at
the end.
# touch "test-file-name"
# touch "test-file-name "
[Note: There is a space at the end]
# ls -1 test*
test-file-name
test-file-name
From the ls output, you cannot identify which file has the space at the
end. Using option -i, you can view the inode number of the file, which
will be different for these two files.
# ls -i1 test*
16187429 test-file-name
16187430 test-file-name
You can specify inode number on a find command as shown below. In this
example, find command renames a file using the inode number.
# find -inum 16187430 -exec mv {} new-test-file-name \;
# ls -i1 *test*
16187430 new-test-file-name
16187429 test-file-name
You can use this technique when you want to do some operation with the
files which are named poorly as shown in the example below. For example,
the file with name — file?.txt has a special character in it. If you try
to execute "rm file?.txt", all the following three files will get
removed. So, follow the steps below to delete only the "file?.txt" file.
# ls
file1.txt file2.txt file?.txt
Find the inode numbers of each file.
# ls -i1
804178 file1.txt
804179 file2.txt
804180 file?.txt
Use the inode number to remove the file that had special character in it
as shown below.
# find -inum 804180 -exec rm {} \;
# ls
file1.txt file2.txt
[Note: The file with name "file?.txt" is now removed]
7. Find file based on the File-Permissions
Following operations are possible.
* Find files that match exact permission
* Check whether the given permission matches, irrespective of other
permission bits
* Search by giving octal / symbolic representation
For this example, let us assume that the directory contains the
following files. Please note that the file-permissions on these files
are different.
# ls -l
total 0
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:31 all_for_all
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:30 everybody_read
---------- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:31 no_for_all
-rw------- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:29 ordinary_file
-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:27 others_can_also_read
----r----- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:27 others_can_only_read
Find files which has read permission to group. Use the following command
to find all files that are readable by the world in your home directory,
irrespective of other permissions for that file.
# find . -perm -g=r -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:30 ./everybody_read
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:31 ./all_for_all
----r----- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:27 ./others_can_only_read
-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:27 ./others_can_also_read
Find files which has read permission only to group.
# find . -perm g=r -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
----r----- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:27 ./others_can_only_read
Find files which has read permission only to group [ search by octal ]
# find . -perm 040 -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
----r----- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:27 ./others_can_only_read
8. Find all empty files (zero byte file) in your home directory and it's
subdirectory
Most files of the following command output will be lock-files and place
holders created by other applications.
# find ~ -empty
List all the empty files only in your home directory.
# find . -maxdepth 1 -empty
List only the non-hidden empty files only in the current directory.
# find . -maxdepth 1 -empty -not -name ".*"
9. Finding the Top 5 Big Files
The following command will display the top 5 largest file in the current
directory and it's 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
10. Finding the Top 5 Small Files
Technique is same as finding the bigger files, but the only difference
the sort is ascending order.
# find . -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n | head -5
In the above command, most probably you will get to see only the ZERO
byte files ( empty files ). So, you can use the following command to
list the smaller files other than the ZERO byte files.
# find . -not -empty -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n | head -5
11. Find Files Based on file-type using option -type
Find only the socket files.
# find . -type s
Find all directories
# find . -type d
Find only the normal files
# find . -type f
Find all the hidden files
# find . -type f -name ".*"
Find all the hidden directories
# find -type d -name ".*"
12. Find files by comparing with the modification time of other file.
Show files which are modified after the specified file. The following
find command displays all the files that are created/modified after
ordinary_file.
# ls -lrt
total 0
-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:27 others_can_also_read
----r----- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:27 others_can_only_read
-rw------- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:29 ordinary_file
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:30 everybody_read
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:31 all_for_all
---------- 1 root root 0 2009-02-19 20:31 no_for_all
# find -newer ordinary_file
./everybody_read
./all_for_all
./no_for_all
13. Find Files by Size
Using the -size option you can find files by size.
Find files bigger than the given size
# find ~ -size +100M
Find files smaller than the given size
# find ~ -size -100M
Find files that matches the exact given size
# find ~ -size 100M
Note: – means less than the give size, + means more than the given size,
and no symbol means exact given size.
14. Remove big archive files using find command
The following command removes *.zip files that are over 100M.
# find / -type f -name *.zip -size +100M -exec rm -i {} \;"
Remove all *.tar file that are over 100M using the alias rm100m (Remove
100M). Use the similar concepts and create alias like rm1g, rm2g, rm5g
to remove file size greater than 1G, 2G and 5G respectively.
# alias rm100m="find / -type f -name *.tar -size +100M -exec rm -i {} \;"
# alias rm1g="find / -type f -name *.tar -size +1G -exec rm -i {} \;"
# alias rm2g="find / -type f -name *.tar -size +2G -exec rm -i {} \;"
# alias rm5g="find / -type f -name *.tar -size +5G -exec rm -i {} \;"
# rm100m
# rm1g
# rm2g
# rm5g
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