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Linux find Command with Examples

Find files by name, type, size and age with the find command, run actions with -exec and -delete, handle file names safely with xargs -0, and use locate.

Beginner6 min readUpdated
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grep searches inside files. find searches for the files themselves, by name, type, size, age and more.

The form is find where conditions:

Terminal
find app
Output
app
app/logs
app/logs/small.log
app/logs/big.log
app/README.md
app/build
app/build/empty.tmp
app/src
app/src/util.py
app/src/main.py

By name#

Terminal
find app -name "*.py"
find app -iname "readme*"
Output
app/src/util.py
app/src/main.py
app/README.md

-iname ignores case. Always quote the pattern, so that the shell does not expand it first.

By type#

-type f finds files, and -type d finds folders:

Terminal
find app -type d
Output
app
app/logs
app/build
app/src

By size and age#

Terminal
find app -type f -size +1M
find app -type f -mtime +30
find app -type f -empty
Output
app/logs/big.log
app/logs/small.log
app/build/empty.tmp
ConditionMeaning
-size +100MBigger than 100 MB
-size -1kSmaller than 1 KB
-mtime +30Modified more than 30 days ago
-mtime -1Modified in the last 24 hours
-mmin -10Modified in the last 10 minutes
-maxdepth 1Do not go deeper than this level

Combining conditions#

Conditions are joined with "and" by default. Use -o for "or", and ! for "not":

Terminal
find app -type f \( -name "*.log" -o -name "*.tmp" \)
find app -type f ! -name "*.py" -path "*src*"
find app -maxdepth 1 -type f
Output
app/logs/small.log
app/logs/big.log
app/build/empty.tmp
app/README.md

Do something with the results#

-exec runs a command on each match. {} stands for the file, and \; ends the command:

Terminal
find app -name "*.py" -exec wc -l {} \;
Output
1 app/src/util.py
1 app/src/main.py

Ending with + passes many files to one command, which is faster:

Terminal
find app -name "*.py" -exec wc -l {} +
Output
1 app/src/util.py
1 app/src/main.py
2 total

To delete, use -delete. Always run without it first, to see what would be removed:

Terminal
find app -name "*.tmp"
find app -name "*.tmp" -delete
find app -name "*.tmp" | wc -l
Output
app/build/empty.tmp
0

find with xargs#

File names can contain spaces. -print0 and xargs -0 separate names with a null character, so they are always safe:

Terminal
touch "app/src/my notes.txt"
find app -name "*.txt" -print0 | xargs -0 ls -l
Output
-rw-rw-r-- 1 asha asha 0 Nov  5 06:24 app/src/my notes.txt

Hide permission errors#

Searching the whole system prints many "Permission denied" lines. Discard them:

Terminal
find / -name "hostname" -type f 2> /dev/null | head -n 2
Output
/usr/bin/hostname
/usr/lib/byobu/hostname

locate#

locate searches a prebuilt database, so it is very fast, but it may be out of date. Install it with sudo apt install plocate, and update it with sudo updatedb.

Common mistakes#

Practice#

Practice exercise

Print only the names of the two largest files under app, with their sizes in bytes.

Show hint

find -printf '%s %p\n' prints size and path. Then use sort -nr and head.

Show solution
Terminal
find app -type f -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head -n 2
Output
2000000 app/logs/big.log
2 app/src/util.py

Key takeaway#

Next: sort, uniq, cut, tr and wc.

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