The find utility recursively descends the directory tree for each path listed, evaluating an expression in terms of each file in the tree. Basic usage:

find [options] path [expression]

Options

Here are some oprations:

Option Description
-E Support extended (modern) regular expressions, followed by `-regex` and `-iregex` primaries.
-s Cause `find` to traverse the file hierarchies in lexicographical order. `find -s` and `find | sort` may give different results.

Expression

Expression is composed of the primaries and operands.

PRIMARIES

All primaries which take a numeric argument allow the number to be preceded by a plus sign (+) or a minus sign (-). A preceding plus sign means more than n, a preceding minus sign means less than n and neither means exactly n.

Primary Description
-ctime n[smhdw] Compare the time of last change of file status information and the time `find` was started.
-d n True if the depth of the file relative to the starting point of the traverse is n.
-empty True if current file or directory is empty.
-[i]name pattern True if the last component of the pathname matches pattern. Special matching characters: [, ], *, ?
-[i]regex pattern True if the whole path of the file matches pattern using regular expression.
-type [bdflps] True if the file is of the specified type. b(block), d(directory), f(regular file), l(symbolic link), p(FIFO), s(socket)

OPERATORS

The primaries may be combined using the following operators.

Operator Description
( expression ) This evaluates to true if the parenthesized expression evaluates to true.
! expression This evaluates to true if the expression is false.
-not expression
expression -and expression This is the logical AND operator.
expression -or expression This is the logical OR operator.

Examples

  • Find the files that have not been changed for more than 7 days: 
    $ find /tmp/ -ctime +7d
  • Find all files whose name ends with 1.txt: 
    $ find . -regex '.*/*1.txt'
  • Find all files whose name ends with .txt but not symbolic links: 
    $ find . -regex '.*/*.txt' -and -not -type l