*** UNIX MANUAL PAGE BROWSER ***

find(1) General Commands Manual find(1) NAME find - Finds files matching an expression SYNOPSIS find pathname... expression STANDARDS Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry stan- dards as follows: find: XPG4, XPG4-UNIX Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about in- dustry standards and associated tags. OPTIONS None OPERANDS Starting point in the directory hierarchy. Series of arguments built as described in the DESCRIPTION section. DESCRIPTION The find command recursively searches the directory tree for each spec- ified path name, seeking files that match the Boolean expression. The output from the find command varies depending on the terms used in ex- pression. Pathname The pathname operand is the starting point in a directory tree for the search. If a file name is used for the path name, the current directory is assumed. A null path name is not permitted, i.e., find "" returns an error. Expressions In the following descriptions, the argument number is a decimal integer that can be specified as +number (more than number), -number (less than number), or number (exactly number). TRUE if the file was accessed in the past number days, where number is interpreted as described in this reference page. Writes the current file to device in cpio format. See the cpio command. TRUE if the file inode was changed in the past num- ber days, where number is interpreted as described in this reference page. Always TRUE. This causes the descent of the directory hierarchy to be done so that all entries in a directory are affected before the directory itself. This can be useful when find is used with cpio to transfer files that are contained in directories without write permis- sion. TRUE if the command runs and returns a 0 (zero) value as exit status. The end of command must be punctuated by a quoted or escaped ; (semicolon). The command parameter { } is replaced by the current path name. TRUE if expression is TRUE. Always TRUE. Causes symbolic links to be followed. When following symbolic links, the find command keeps track of the directories visited so that infinite loops can be de- tected. For example, a loop can occur if a symbolic link points to an ancestor. This expression should not be used with the -type type ex- pression where type is of type l. TRUE if the file system to which the file belongs is of the type type as follows: [DIGITAL] UNIX File Sys- tem (Berkeley fast file system) or a swap partition [DIGITAL] Network File System (NFS), Version 2 protocol [DIGITAL] Memory File System (RAM Disk) (See mfs(8)) [DIGITAL] PC File System [DIGITAL] System V File System [DIGITAL] ISO 9660 or High Sierra Formatted (CD-ROM) File System [DIGITAL] DCE Distributed File System [DIGITAL] DCE Episode File System [DIGITAL] Process File System (used by debuggers) [DIGI- TAL] Advanced File System (AdvFS) [DIGITAL] File on File mount (used by streams) [DIGITAL] File Descriptor File System (used by streams) [DIGITAL] Reserved for third-party file systems [DIGITAL] Network File System, Version 3 protocol TRUE if the file belongs to group. If group is numeric and does not appear as a group name in the /etc/group file, it is interpreted as a group ID. TRUE if file has inode number. TRUE if file has inode number. [DIGITAL] TRUE if the file has number links. See the ln command. Always TRUE; causes pathname to be printed together with its associated statistics. These include, respectively, inode number, size in kilobytes (1024 bytes), protection mode, number of hard links, user, group, size in bytes, and modification time. If the file is a special file, the size field will contain instead the ma- jor and minor device numbers. [DIGITAL] The find command does not follow symbolic links to other directories or files. Rather, it applies the specified selection criteria to the symbolic links themselves, treating them as if they were ordinary files. (For more information on symbolic links, see ln(1).) [DIGITAL] TRUE if the current file is on the same file system as the current starting path name. TRUE if the file was modified in the past number days, where number is interpreted as described in this reference page. TRUE if file matches the file name. You can use pattern-matching characters, provided they are quoted. In an expression such as [a-z], the dash means through according to the current collating sequence. The collating sequence is determined by the value of the LC_COLLATE environment variable. See the reference page for your current shell for a more detailed explanation of pattern matching and quoting special characters. Sets the input/output size (5120 bytes by default) to size. TRUE if the current file was modified more recently than the file indicated by file. The find command asks you whether it should start command. If your response begins with y, or the locale's equivalent of a y, com- mand is started. The end of command must be punctuated by a quoted or escaped semicolon. TRUE if the file permission code of the file exactly matches octal_number (see the chmod(1) ref- erence page). The octal_number argument may be up to three octal digits. If you want to test the higher-order permission bits (the set-user- ID bit or set-group-ID bit, for example), prefix the octal_num- ber argument with a - (dash). This makes more flag bits signif- icant (see the stat system call for an explanation of the addi- tional bits), and also changes the comparison to (flags&octal_number)==octal_number Always TRUE; causes the cur- rent path name to be displayed. If an expression is not speci- fied or if expression is not -ok or -exec, -print is the de- fault. For example, the following commands produce the same re- sult: find . find . -print find . -name "*" Always TRUE. Prunes the search tree at the file. That is, if the current path name is a directory, The find command does not descend into that direc- tory. In a networking environment, this flag keeps the find com- mand from searching through remote file systems. TRUE if the file is number blocks long (512 bytes per block). For this com- parison, the file size is rounded up to the nearest block. TRUE if the file is number bytes long. TRUE if the file is number kilobytes long. For this comparison, the file size is rounded up to the nearest kilobyte. TRUE if the file type is of the speci- fied type as follows: [DIGITAL] Block special file [DIGI- TAL] Character special file Directory Plain file [DIGI- TAL] Symbolic link [DIGITAL] FIFO (a named pipe) [DIGI- TAL] Socket TRUE if the file belongs to user. If user is nu- meric and does not appear as a login name in the /etc/passwd file, it is interpreted as a user ID. Always TRUE; causes find not to traverse down a file system different from the one on which the current path name resides. The primaries may be combined using the following operators (in de- scending order of precedence): A parenthesized group of primaries and operators. Parentheses are special to the shell and must be escaped. Parentheses must be separated from other primaries and operators by at least one space. The negation of a primary (! is the unary not opera- tor). Concatenation of primaries (the and operation is implied by the juxtaposition of two primaries but can also be specified explicitly with the -a operator). Alternation of primaries (-o is the or opera- tor). To avoid unpredictable results when using a range expression to match a class of characters, use a character class expression rather than a standard range expression. For information about character class ex- pressions, see the grep command. EXIT STATUS The following exit values are returned: All pathname operands were tra- versed successfully. An error occurred. RETURN VALUES The -exec command expression evaluates TRUE if the command runs and re- turns a 0 (zero) value as exit status. EXAMPLES To list all files in the file system with a given base file name, en- ter: find / -name .profile -print This searches the entire file system and writes the complete path names of all files named / (backslash) tells find to search the root directory and all of its subdirectories. This may take a while, so it is best to limit the search by specifying the di- rectories where you think the files might be. To list the files with a specific permission code in the current directory tree, enter: find . -perm 0600 -print This lists the names of the files that have only owner-read and owner-write permission. The (dot) tells find to search the cur- rent directory and its subdirectories. See the chmod(1) refer- ence page for details about permission codes. To search several directories for files with certain permission codes, enter: find manual clients proposals -perm -0600 -print This lists the names of the files that have owner-read and owner-write permission and possibly other permissions. The di- rectories manual, clients, and proposals, and their subdirecto- ries, are searched. Note that -perm 0600 in the previous exam- ple selects only files with permission codes that match 0600 ex- actly. In this example, -perm -0600 selects files with permis- sion codes that allow at least the accesses indicated by 0600. This also matches the permission codes 0622 and 2744. To search for regular files with multiple links, enter: find . -type f -links +1 -print This lists the names of the ordinary files (-type f) that have more than one link (-links +1). Note that every directory has at least two links: the entry in its parent directory and its own (dot) entry. See the ln command for details about multiple file links. To find all accessible files whose path name begins with find, enter: find find -print To remove all files named a.out or *.o that have not been accessed for a week and that are not mounted using nfs, enter: find / \( -name a.out -o -name '*.o' \) -atime +7 -exec \ rm {} \; -o -fstype nfs -prune To find all files modified within the last 24 hours, enter: find . -mtime 1 -print To find all files on the root file system, enter: find / -mount -print To write all the files on the root file system to tape, enter: find / -mount -print -cpio /dev/rmt?h cpio -iBvt </dev/rmt?h To find all the mount points on the root file system, enter: find / ! -mount -print The next several examples show how to build com- plex expressions using the available operators. These examples use the directory structure that follows: % ls -al total 77 drwxr-xr-x 9 me users 8192 Nov 6 17:28 . drwxrwxrwx 47 me users 8192 Nov 6 13:30 .. -rw- r--r-- 1 me users 1559 Dec 23 1996 7 -rw-r--r-- 1 me users 7 May 30 12:22 abc -rw-r--r-- 1 me users 0 Nov 5 17:44 ccc drwxr-xr-x 2 me users 8192 Apr 6 1997 crn drwxr-xr-x 3 me users 8192 Mar 23 1997 crypto drwxr-xr-x 2 me users 8192 Sep 12 14:24 exp -rwx--x--x 1 me users 0 Nov 1 1996 filea ---x-w--wx 1 me users 0 Nov 1 1996 fileb -rw-r--r-- 1 me adm 0 Jun 13 13:43 filek -rwxr-xr-x 1 me users 216 Nov 1 1996 filet -rw-r--r-- 1 me users 0 Nov 6 17:35 find -rw-r--r-- 1 me adm 0 Jun 13 13:43 gfilek -rwxr-xr-x 1 me users 216 Nov 6 17:28 gfilet dr- wxr-xr-x 2 me users 8192 Oct 23 13:49 h4d -rw- r--r-- 1 me adm 0 Jun 13 13:43 hfilek drwxr- xr-x 2 me users 8192 Oct 23 11:50 resume drwxr-xr- x 2 me users 8192 Sep 8 13:31 timtst -rw-r--r-- 1 me users 0 Nov 6 17:25 typescript drwxr-xr-x 2 me users 8192 Dec 18 1996 wordgame The following example finds all files that have a name starting with file. Notice that the asterisk must be escaped to prevent the shell from interpreting it as a special character. % find . -name file\* ./filea ./fileb ./filet ./filek The following example finds all files that have a name starting with file and an owning group of adm. Notice that this is the default behavior, and is identical to the next example using the -a operator. % find . -name file\* -group adm ./filek The following example finds all files that have a name starting with file and an owning group of adm. Notice that this is identical to the prior example of the default behavior. % find . -name file\* -a -group adm ./filek The following example finds all files that have a name starting with file or that have an owning group of adm. % find . -name file\* -o -group adm ./filea ./fileb ./filet ./filek ./gfilek ./hfilek The following example finds all files that have a name starting with file or that have an owning group of adm and a name starting with gf. % find . -name file\* -o -group adm -name gf\* ./filea ./fileb ./filet ./filek ./gfilek The following example finds all files that have a name starting with file and that have an owning group of adm or a name starting with gf. % find . -name file\* -a -group adm -o -name gf\* ./filek ./gfilek ./gfilet The following example finds all files that have an owning group other than the group users. % find . ! -group users ./filek ./gfilek ./hfilek The following example finds all files owned by the group users and that have a name starting with file or that have a name starting with cc. % find . \( -group users -a -name file\* \) -o -name cc\* ./filea ./fileb ./filet ./ccc The following example finds all files not owned by the group users and that have a name starting with file or that have a name starting with cc. % find . \( ! -group users -a -name file\* \) -o -name cc\* ./filek ./ccc ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES The following environment variables affect the execution of find: Pro- vides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization vari- ables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty string value, over- rides the values of all the other internationalization variables. De- termines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multi- byte characters in arguments). Determines the locale for the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error. Deter- mines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MES- SAGES. Determines the location of command for -exec and -ok primaries. FILES Contains group information. Contains user information. SEE ALSO Commands: chmod(1), cpio(1), df(1), grep(1), ln(1), mount(8), Bourne shell sh(1b), POSIX shell sh(1p), test(1) Functions: mount(2), stat(2) Routines: getvfsbyname(3) Files: fs(4), fstab(4), cdfs(4) Standards: standards(5) find(1)