find(1) find(1)
NAME find - find files
SYNOPSIS find pathname_list [expression]
DESCRIPTION The find command recursively descends the directory hierarchy for each path name in pathname_list (that is, one or more path names) seeking files that match a Boolean expression written in the primaries given below. By default, find does not follow symbolic links.
The Boolean expression is evaluated using short-circuit evaluation. This means that whenever the result of a Boolean operation (AND or OR) is known from evaluating the left-hand argument, the right-hand argument is not evaluated.
In the descriptions of the primaries, the argument n represents a decimal integer; +n means more than n, -n means less than n, and n means exactly n.
The following primaries are recognized:
-depth A position-independent term which causes descent of the directory hierarchy to be done so that all entries in a directory are acted on before the directory itself. This can be useful when find is used with cpio(1) to transfer files that are contained in directories without write permission. It is also useful when using cpio(1) and the modification dates of directories must be preserved. Always true.
-follow A position-independent term which causes find to follow symbolic links. Always true.
-fsonly FStype A position-independent term which causes find to stop descending any directory whose file system is not of the type specified by FStype, where FStype is one of cdfs, hfs, or nfs, representing the CDFS, HFS, or NFS file system type, respectively.
In this context, mount points inherit the FStype of their parent directory. This means that when -fsonly hfs has been specified and find encounters an NFS mount point that is mounted on an HFS file system, the mount point will be visited but entries below that mount point will not. It is important to
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note that when -fsonly nfs has been specified, any HFS file systems that are beneath the mount point of an NFS file system are not traversed. Always true.
-xdev A position-independent term that causes find to avoid crossing any file system mount points that exist below starting points enumerated in pathname_list. The mount point itself is visited, but entries below the mount point are not. Always true.
-mountstop Identical to -xdev. This primary is provided for backward compatibility only. -xdev is preferred over -mountstop.
-name file True if file matches the last component of the current file name. The matching is performed according to Pattern Matching Notation (see regexp(5)).
-path file Same as -name except the full path (as would be output by -print) is used instead of just the base name. Note that / characters are not treated as a special case. For example, */.profile matches ./home/fred/.profile.
-perm [-]mode In this primary, the argument mode is used to represent file mode bits. The argument is identical in format to the mode operand as described in chmod(1), with the exception that the first character must not be the - operator. When using the symbolic form of mode, the starting template is assumed to have all file mode bits cleared.
If the leading minus is omitted, this primary is true when the file permission bits exactly match the value of mode. Bits associated with the symbolic attributes s (set-user-ID, set-group-ID) and t (sticky bit) are ignored when the minus is omitted.
If mode is preceded by a minus, this primary is true if all of the bits that are set in mode are also set in the file permission bits. In this case, the bits associated with the symbolic attributes s and t are significant.
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-fstype FStype True if the file system to which the file belongs is of type FStype, where FStype is one of cdfs, hfs, or nfs, corresponding to the CDFS, HFS, or NFS file system type, respectively.
-type c True if the type of the file is c, where c is one of: f Regular file d Directory b Block special file c Character special file p FIFO (named pipe) l Symbolic link s Socket n Network special file M Mount point
-links n True if the file has n links.
-user uname True if the file belongs to the user uname. If uname is numeric and does not appear as a login name in the /etc/passwd file, it is taken as a user ID. The uname operand can be preceded by a + or - to modify the comparison operation as described previously.
-group gname True if the file belongs to the group gname. If gname is numeric and does not appear in the /etc/group file, it is taken as a group ID. The gname operand can be preceded by a + or - to modify the comparison operation as described previously.
-nouser True if the file belongs to a user ID that is not listed in the password database. See passwd(4).
-nogroup True if the file belongs to a group ID that is not listed in the group database. See group(4).
-size n[c] True if the file is n blocks long. If n is followed by a c, the size is in bytes.
-atime n True if the file has been accessed in n days. The access time of directories in pathname_list is changed by find itself.
-mtime n True if the file has been modified in n days.
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-ctime n True if the file inode has been changed in n days.
-newer file True if the current file has been modified more recently than the argument file.
-newer[tv1[tv2]] file True if the indicated time value (tv1) of the current file is newer than the indicated time value (tv2) of file. The time values tv1 and tv2 are each selected from the set of characters:
a The time the file was last accessed c The time the inode of the file was last modified m The time the file was last modified
If the tv2 character is omitted, it defaults to m. Note that the -newer option is equivalent to -newermm.
Syntax examples;
-newera file -newermc file
-inum n True if the file serial number (inode number) is n. Note that file serial numbers are unique only within a given file system. Therefore, matching file serial numbers does not guarantee that the referenced files are the same unless you restrict the search to a single file system.
-linkedto path True if the file is the same physical file as the file specified by path (i.e., linked to path). This primary is similar to -inum, but correctly detects when a file is hard-linked to path, even when multiple file systems are searched.
-print Causes the current path name to be printed. Always true.
-exec cmd True if the executed cmd returns a zero value as exit status. The end of cmd must be punctuated by a semicolon (semicolon is special to the shell and must be escaped). Any command argument {} is replaced by the current path name.
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-ok cmd Same as -exec except that the generated command line is printed with a question mark first, and is executed only if the user responds by typing y.
-cpio device Write the current file on device in cpio(4) format (5120-byte records). The use of -cpio implies -depth. Always true.
-ncpio Same as -cpio but adds the -c option to cpio. The use of -ncpio implies -depth. Always true.
-prune If the current entry is a directory, cause find to skip that directory. This can be useful to avoid walking certain directories, or to avoid recursive loops when using cpio -p. Note, however, that -prune is useless if the -depth option has also been given. See the description of -only and the EXAMPLES section, below, for more information. Always true.
-only This is a positive-logic version of -prune. A -prune is performed after every directory, unless -only is successfully evaluated for that directory. As an example, the following three commands are equivalent:
find . -fsonly hfs -print find . -print -fstype hfs -only find . -print ! -fstype hfs -prune
Note, however, that -only is useless if the -depth option has also been given. Always true.
( expression ) True if the parenthesized expression is true. The spaces are required. Parentheses are special to the shell and must be escaped, as in \( and \).
Primaries can be combined by using the following operators (in order of decreasing precedence):
! expression Logical NOT operator. True if expression is not true.
expression [-a] expression Logical AND operator. True if both of the expressions are true.
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expression -o expression Logical OR operator. True if either or both of the expressions are true.
If expression is omitted, or if none of -print, -ok, -exec, -cpio, or -ncpio is specified, -print is assumed.
Access Control Lists The -acl primary enables the user to search for access control list entries. It is true if the file's access control list matches an access control list pattern or contains optional access control list entries (see acl(5)). It has three forms:
-acl aclpatt Match all files whose access control list includes all (zero or more) pattern entries specified by the aclpatt pattern.
-acl =aclpatt Match a file only if its access control list includes all (zero or more) pattern entries specified by the aclpatt pattern, and every entry in its access control list is matched by at least one pattern entry specified in the aclpatt pattern.
-acl opt Match all files containing optional access control list entries.
The aclpatt string can be given as an operator or short form pattern; see acl(5).
By default, -acl is true for files whose access control lists include all the (zero or more) access control list patterns in aclpatt. A file's access control list can also contain unmatched entries.
If aclpatt begins with =, the remainder of the string must match all entries in a file's access control list.
The aclpatt string (by default, or the part following =) can be either an access control list or an access control list pattern. However, if it is an access control list, aclpatt must include at least the three base entries ((user.%, mode), (%.group, mode), and (%.%, mode)).
As a special case, if aclpatt is the word opt, the primary is true for files with access control list entries.
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES Environment Variables If an internationalization variable is not specified or is null, it defaults to the value of LANG.
If LANG is not specified or is null, it defaults to C (see lang(5)).
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If LC_ALL is set to a nonempty string value, it overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables.
If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, all internationalization variables default to C (see environ(5)).
LC_CTYPE determines the interpretation of text as single and/or multibyte characters, the classification of characters as printable, and the characters matched by character class expressions in regular expressions.
LC_MESSAGES determines the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error and informative messages written to standard output.
NLSPATH determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
International Code Set Support Single- and multibyte character code sets are supported.
EXAMPLES Search the two directories /example and /new/example for files containing the string Where are you and print the names of the files:
find /example /new/example -exec grep -l 'Where are you' {} \;
Remove all files named a.out or *.o that have not been accessed for a week:
find / \( -name a.out -o -name '*.o' \) -atime +7 -exec rm {} \;
Note that the spaces delimiting the escaped parentheses are required.
Print the names of all files on this machine. Avoid walking nfs directories while still printing the nfs mount points:
find / -fsonly hfs -print
Copy the entire file system to a disk mounted on /Disk, avoiding the recursive copy problem. Both commands are equivalent (note the use of -path instead of -name):
cd /; find . ! -path ./Disk -only -print | cpio -pdxm /Disk
cd /; find . -path ./Disk -prune -o -print | cpio -pdxm /Disk
Copy the root disk to a disk mounted on /Disk, skipping all mounted file systems below /. Note that -xdev does not cause / to be skipped, even though it is a mount point. This is because / is the starting
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point and -xdev only affects entries below starting points.
cd /; find . -xdev -print | cpio -pdm /Disk
Change permissions on all regular files in a directory subtree to mode 444, and permissions on all directories to 555:
find <pathname> -type f -print | xargs chmod 444 find <pathname> -type d -print | xargs chmod 555
Note that output from find was piped to xargs(1) instead of using the -exec primary. This is because when a large number of files or directories is to be processed by a single command, the -exec primary spawns a separate process for each file or directory, whereas xargs collects file names or directory names into multiple arguments to a single chmod command, resulting in fewer processes and greater system efficiency.
Access Control List Examples Find all files not owned by user karl that have access control lists with at least one entry associated with karl, and one entry for no specific user in group bin with the read bit on and the write bit off:
find / ! -user karl -acl 'karl.*, %.bin+r-w' -print
Find all files that have a read bit set in any access control list entry:
find / -acl '*.*+r' -print
Find all files that have the write bit unset and execute bit set in every access control list entry:
find / -acl '=*.*-w+x' -print
Find all files that have optional access control list entries:
find / -acl opt -print
DEPENDENCIES NFS The -acl primary is always false for NFS files.
WARNINGS Because of interoperability goals, cpio does not support archiving files larger than 2GB or files that have user/group IDs larger than 60,000 (60K). Files with user/group IDs greater than 60K are archived and restored under the user/group ID of the current process.
AUTHOR find was developed by AT&T and HP.
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FILES /etc/group Group names /etc/mnttab Mount points /etc/passwd User names
SEE ALSO chacl(1), chmod(1), cpio(1), sh(1), test(1), xargs(1), mknod(2), stat(2), cpio(4), fs(4), group(4), passwd(4), acl(5), environ(5), lang(5), regexp(5).
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE find: SVID2, SVID3, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4, POSIX.2
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