"find" - Search for Files

Ubuntu Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟"find" - Search for Files

This section provides a tutorial example on how to use 'find' command to search for files in a directory tree. '-name' and '-size' are 2 commonly used search conditions.

If you have a large directory tree with many files and sub-directories, you can use the "find" command to search for file in the directory tree. Here are some examples:

1. Search files with a file name pattern with the "-name" option:

herong$ find . -name '*.zip'

... list of *.zip files

2. Search files larger than 100 MB with the "-size" option:

herong$ find . -size +100M -printf '%s %p\n'

3. Search top 10 largest files with "sort" and "head" commands:

herong$ find . -printf '%s %p\n'| sort -nr | head -10

5. Search top 10 largest directories with "sort" and "head" commands:

herong$ find . -type d -printf '%s %p\n' | sort -nr | head -10

5. Delete matched files with the "-delete" option:

herong$ find . -name *.tmp -delete

6. More examples with "find" command:

herong$ find . -type f -newermt '2021-07-01'      # files newer than a date
herong$ find . -type f \! -newermt '2021-07-01'   # files older than a date

herong$ find . -type f -mtime -30   # files younger than 30 days
herong$ find . -type f -mtime +30   # files older than 30 days

herong$ rm `find /tmp -type f -mtime +30`   # remove older files