1. Name find [man page] - search for files in a directory hierarchy 2. Synopsis find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression] 3. Frequently used options -iname pattern
Like -name, but the match is case insensitive.
-name pattern
Base of file name (the path with the leading directories
removed) matches shell pattern pattern.
-mmin n
File's data was last modified n minutes ago.
-size n[cwbkMG]
File uses n units of space. The following suffixes can be used:
-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.
-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; this is never true if the -L option or the
-follow option is in effect, unless the symbolic link is
broken. If you want to search for symbolic links when -L
is in effect, use -xtype.
s socket
D door (Solaris) 4. Examples Execution of find command can grow to very high complexity. One would be able to write a whole book in regards to number of options and arguments which can be used with find command. First we can try to search for file. I forgot where the resolv.conf file is hidden. We can attempt to find it in / directory. In this example I'm going to redirect standard error to /dev/null, feel free to run find command without it. The syntax goes like this, find (actual command) where ( / ) and what ( -name resolv.conf ): $ find / -name resolv.conf 
Lets assume that we have two files in /tmp directory: file and File. Unix system are case sensitive so file and File are two different files. touch command can help us to create those files: $ touch /tmp/file /tmp/File 
By default find command searches only for exact match: $ find /tmp -name file 
To make find command case insensitive we can use -iname option. $ find /tmp -iname file 
To find files which have been created in past 20 minutes from now we can use -mmin option: $ find /tmp/ -mmin -20 
When searching for files according their access time, a table below might be helpful: | Options | Description | | -atime -3 | All files that were last accessed less than 3 days ago | | -atime +5 | All files that were last accessed more than 5 days ago | | -atime 4 | All files that were last accessed exactly 4 days ago | lets find files with certain size. In this case we search for files in /var/log with size of 8K: $ find /var/log/ -size 8k 
We can also instruct find command to execute certain commands on each file it finds. Lets change permissions for both files, file and File in /tmp directory to chmod 777. $ find /tmp -iname file -exec chmod 777 {} \; 
find can also search for certain types of files. For example if we are looking for symbolic links we can run find command with -type option: $ find / -maxdepth 1 -type l 
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Did You Know..
that you can search for files created or changed within certain number of days? For example to search for files created or changed within 20 days in /usr/bin/ directory a find linux command can be used with following options:
ISSN 1836-5930
