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 periods ago the file was last accessed, any fractional part is ignored, so to
match -atime +1, a file has to have been accessed 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’. Please
note that you should quote patterns as a matter of course, otherwise the shell will expand any wildcard characters in them.
-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 section 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. Don’t forget to
enclose the pattern in quotes in order to protect it from expansion by the shell.
-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 symbolic
mode. See the EXAMPLES section for some illustrative examples. If no permission bits in mode are set, this test currently matches no files. However, it
will soon be changed to match any file (the idea is to be more consistent with the behaviour of perm -000).
-perm +mode
Deprecated, old way of searching for files with any of the permission bits in mode set. You should use -perm /mode instead. Trying to use the ’+’ syntax
with symbolic modes will yield surprising results. For example, ’+u+x’ is a valid symbolic mode (equivalent to +u,+x, i.e. 0111) and will therefore not be
evaluated as -perm +mode but instead as the exact mode specifier -perm mode and so it matches files with exact permissions 0111 instead of files with any
execute bit set. If you found this paragraph confusing, you’re not alone – just use -perm /mode. This form of the -perm test is deprecated because the
POSIX specification requires the interpretation of a leading ’+’ as being part of a symbolic mode, and so we switched to using ’/’ instead.
-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 regular expressions understood by find are by default Emacs Regular Expressions, but this
can be changed with the -regextype option.
-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’ for-
mat specifiers of -printf handle sparse files differently. The ‘b’ suffix 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; 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)
-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 something 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 pattern
(SELinux only) Security context of the file matches glob pattern.
ACTIONS
-delete
Delete files; true if removal succeeded. If the removal failed, an error message is issued. Use of this action automatically turns on the ’-depth’ option.
-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 argu-
ments where it is alone, as in some versions of find. Both of these constructions might need to be escaped (with a ‘\’) or quoted to protect them from
expansion by the shell. See the EXAMPLES section for examples 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 directory.
-execdir command ;
-execdir command {} +
Like -exec, but the specified command is run from the subdirectory containing 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 reference 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. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section
for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-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. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are han-
dled.
-fprint0 file
True; like -print0 but write to file like -fprint. The output file is always created, even if the predicate is never matched. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-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. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-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. If the
command is run, its standard input is redirected from /dev/null.
-print True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed by a newline. 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’. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-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. If
the command is run, its standard input is redirected from /dev/null.
-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’ function.
%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 values 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 set-
ting 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 determinable
Date fields:
a locale’s abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
A locale’s full weekday name, variable length (Sunday..Saturday)
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 The amount of disk space used for this file in 512-byte blocks. Since disk space is allocated in multiples of the filesystem block size this is usu-
ally greater than %s/1024, but it can also be smaller if the file is a sparse file.
%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 element).
%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 directory) 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. Since disk space is allocated in multiples of the filesystem block size this is usually
greater than %s/1024, but it can also be smaller 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 ’traditional’ numbers which most Unix implementations use, but if your particular implementa-
tion 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’).
%M File’s permissions (in symbolic form, as for ls). This directive is supported in findutils 4.2.5 and later.
%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 directives 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.
See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-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 processes 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. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
UNUSUAL FILENAMES
Many of the actions of find result in the printing of data which is under the control of other users. This includes file names, sizes, modification times and so
forth. File names are a potential problem since they can contain any character except ’’ and ’/’. Unusual characters in file names can do unexpected and often
undesirable things to your terminal (for example, changing the settings of your function keys on some terminals). Unusual characters are handled differently by
various actions, as described below.
-print0, -fprint0
Always print the exact filename, unchanged, even if the output is going to a terminal.
-ls, -fls
Unusual characters are always escaped. White space, backslash, and double quote characters are printed using C-style escaping (for example ’\f’, ’\”’).
Other unusual characters are printed using an octal escape. Other printable characters (for -ls and -fls these are the characters between octal 041 and
0176) are printed as-is.
-printf, -fprintf
If the output is not going to a terminal, it is printed as-is. Otherwise, the result depends on which directive is in use. The directives %D, %F, %g, %G,
%H, %Y, and %y expand to values which are not under control of files’ owners, and so are printed as-is. The directives %a, %b, %c, %d, %i, %k, %m, %M, %n,
%s, %t, %u and %U have values which are under the control of files’ owners but which cannot be used to send arbitrary data to the terminal, and so these are
printed as-is. The directives %f, %h, %l, %p and %P are quoted. This quoting is performed in the same way as for GNU ls. This is not the same quoting
mechanism as the one used for -ls and -fls. If you are able to decide what format to use for the output of find then it is normally better to use ’’ as
a terminator than to use newline, as file names can contain white space and newline characters.
-print, -fprint
Quoting is handled in the same way as for -printf and -fprintf. If you are using find in a script or in a situation where the matched files might have arbi-
trary names, you should consider using -print0 instead of -print.
The -ok and -okdir actions print the current filename as-is. This may change in a future release.
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 discarded; 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 conformance 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 dereferenced. 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 appropriate. 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 compatibility with various BSD systems, but you should use the POSIX-compliant option -depth instead.
The POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable does not affect the behaviour of the -regex or -iregex tests because those tests aren’t specified in the POSIX standard.
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 func-
tion, 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’ test, 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 directories which are searched to find the executables invoked by ‘-exec’, ‘-execdir’, ‘-ok’ and ‘-okdir’.
POSIXLY_CORRECT
Determines the block size used by ‘-ls’ and ‘-fls’. If ‘POSIXLY_CORRECT’ is set, blocks are units of 512 bytes. Otherwise they are units of 1024 bytes.
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 ’{}’ \;
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 / \( -perm -4000 -fprintf /root/suid.txt ’%#m %u %p\n’ \) , \
\( -size +100M -fprintf /root/big.txt ’%-10s %p\n’ \)
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 modified is divided by 24 hours and any remainder is discarded. That means that to match -mtime 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 other users 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, and which other users can read, without regard to the presence of any extra permis-
sion 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 writable by somebody (their owner, or their group, or anybody else).
find . -perm /220
find . -perm /u+w,g+w
find . -perm /u=w,g=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 writable by either their owner or their group. The files don’t have to be writable by both the owner and group to be
matched; either will do.
find . -perm -220
find . -perm -g+w,u+w
Both these commands do the same thing; search for files which are writable by both their owner and their group.
find . -perm -444 -perm /222 ! -perm /111
find . -perm -a+r -perm /a+w ! -perm /a+x
These two commands both search for files that are readable for everybody (-perm -444 or -perm -a+r), have at least on write bit set (-perm /222 or -perm /a+w) but
are not executable for anybody (! -perm /111 and ! -perm /a+x respectively)
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), chmod(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.
NON-BUGS
$ find . -name *.c -print
find: paths must precede expression
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path…] [expression]
This happens because *.c has been expanded by the shell resulting in find actually receiving a command line like this:
find . -name bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c -print
That command is of course not going to work. Instead of doing things this way, you should enclose the pattern in quotes:
$ find . -name ´*.c´ -print
BUGS
The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files; this change will probably be
made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning message is given if you do this.
There are security problems inherent in the behaviour that the POSIX standard specifies 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://savannah.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@gnu.org.
FIND(1)
(END)
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
serverXpertz 