find(1)
NAME
find - find files
SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/find path... expression
/usr/xpg4/bin/find path... expression
DESCRIPTION
The find utility recursively descends the directory hierar-
chy for each path seeking files that match a Boolean expres-
sion written in the primaries given below.
find will be able to descend to arbitrary depths in a file
hierarchy and will not fail due to path length limitations
(unless a path operand specified by the application exceeds
PATH_MAX requirements).
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
path A path name of a starting point in the directory
hierarchy.
expression
The first argument that starts with a -, or is a ! or
a (, and all subsequent arguments will be interpreted
as an expression made up of the following primaries
and operators. In the descriptions, wherever n is used
as a primary argument, it will be interpreted as a
decimal integer optionally preceded by a plus (+) or
minus (-) sign, as follows:
+n more than n
n exactly n
-n less than n
Expressions
Valid expressions are:
-atime n
True if the file was accessed n days ago. The access
time of directories in path is changed by find itself.
-cpio device
Always true. Writes the current file on device in cpio
format (5120-byte records).
-ctime n
True if the file's status was changed n days ago.
-depth
Always true. Causes descent of the directory hierarchy
to be done so that all entries in a directory are
acted on before the directory itself. This can be
useful when find is used with cpio(1) to transfer
files that are contained in directories without write
permission.
-exec command
True if the executed command returns a zero value as
exit status. The end of command must be punctuated by
an escaped semicolon (;). A command argument {} is
replaced by the current path name. If the last argu-
ment to -exec is {} and you specify + rather than the
semicolon (;), the command will be invoked fewer
times, with {} replaced by groups of pathnames.
-follow
Always true. Causes symbolic links to be followed.
When following symbolic links, find keeps track of the
directories visited so that it can detect infinite
loops. For example, such a loop would occur if a sym-
bolic link pointed to an ancestor. This expression
should not be used with the -type l expression.
-fstype type
True if the filesystem to which the file belongs is of
type type.
-group gname
True if the file belongs to the group gname. If gname
is numeric and does not appear in the /etc/group file,
or in the NIS/NIS+ tables, it is taken as a group ID.
-inum n
True if the file has inode number n.
-links n
True if the file has n links.
-local
True if the file system type is not a remote file sys-
tem type as defined in the /etc/dfs/fstypes file. nfs
is used as the default remote filesystem type if the
/etc/dfs/fstypes file is not present. Note that -local
will descend the hierarchy of non-local directories.
See EXAMPLES for an example of how to search for local
files without descending.
-ls Always true. Prints current path name together with
its associated statistics. These include (respec-
tively):
o inode number
o size in kilobytes (1024 bytes)
o protection mode
o number of hard links
o user
o group
o size in bytes
o modification time.
If the file is a special file, the size field will instead
contain the major and minor device numbers.
If the file is a symbolic link, the pathname of the
linked-to file is printed preceded by `->'. The format
is identical to that of ls -gilds (see ls(1B)). Note:
Formatting is done internally, without executing the
ls program.
-mount
Always true. Restricts the search to the file system
containing the directory specified. Does not list
mount points to other file systems.
-mtime n
True if the file's data was modified n days ago.
-name pattern
True if pattern matches the current file name. Normal
shell file name generation characters (see sh(1)) may
be used. A backslash (\) is used as an escape charac-
ter within the pattern. The pattern should be escaped
or quoted when find is invoked from the shell.
Unless the character '.' is explicitly specified in
the beginning of pattern, a current file name begin-
ning with '.' will not match pattern when using
/usr/bin/find. /usr/xpg4/bin/find does not make this
distinction; wildcard file name generation characters
can match file names beginning with '.'.
-ncpio device
Always true. Writes the current file on device in cpio
-c format (5120 byte records).
-newer file
True if the current file has been modified more
recently than the argument file.
-nogroup
True if the file belongs to a group not in the
/etc/group file, or in the NIS/NIS+ tables.
-nouser
True if the file belongs to a user not in the
/etc/passwd file, or in the NIS/NIS+ tables.
-ok command
Like -exec, except that the generated command line is
printed with a question mark first, and is executed
only if the user responds by typing y.
-perm [-]mode
The mode argument is used to represent file mode bits.
It will be identical in format to the symbolic mode
operand, symbolic_mode_list, described in chmod(1),
and will be interpreted as follows. To start, a tem-
plate will be assumed with all file mode bits cleared.
An op symbol of:
+ Will set the appropriate mode bits in the tem-
plate
- Will clear the appropriate bits
= Will set the appropriate mode bits, without
regard to the contents of the file mode creation
mask of the process
The op symbol of - cannot be the first character of mode, to
avoid ambiguity with the optional leading hyphen. Since the
initial mode is all bits off, there are no symbolic modes
that need to use - as the first character.
If the hyphen is omitted, the primary will evaluate as true
when the file permission bits exactly match the value of the
resulting template.
Otherwise, if mode is prefixed by a hyphen, the pri-
mary will evaluate as true if at least all the bits in
the resulting template are set in the file permission
bits.
-perm [-]onum
True if the file permission flags exactly match the
octal number onum (see chmod(1)). If onum is prefixed
by a minus sign (-), only the bits that are set in
onum are compared with the file permission flags, and
the expression evaluates true if they match.
-print
Always true. Causes the current path name to be
printed.
-prune
Always yields true. Does not examine any directories
or files in the directory structure below the pattern
just matched. (See EXAMPLES). If -depth is specified,
-prune will have no effect.
-size n[c]
True if the file is n blocks long (512 bytes per
block). If n is followed by a c, the size is in bytes.
-type c
True if the type of the file is c, where c is b, c, d,
D, f, l, p, or s for block special file, character
special file, directory, door, plain file, symbolic
link, fifo (named pipe), or socket, respectively.
-user uname
True if the file belongs to the user uname. If uname
is numeric and does not appear as a login name in the
/etc/passwd file, or in the NIS/NIS+ tables, it is
taken as a user ID.
-xdev Same as the -mount primary.
-xattr
True if the file has extended attributes.
Complex Expressions
The primaries may be combined using the following operators
(in order of decreasing precedence):
1) ( expression )
True if the parenthesized expression is true
(parentheses are special to the shell and must be
escaped).
2) ! expression
The negation of a primary (! is the unary not opera-
tor).
3) expression [-a] expression
Concatenation of primaries (the and operation is
implied by the juxtaposition of two primaries).
4) expression -o expression
Alternation of primaries (-o is the or operator).
Note: When you use find in conjunction with cpio, if you use
the -L option with cpio then you must use the -follow
expression with find and vice versa. Otherwise there will be
undesirable results.
If no expression is present, -print will be used as the
expression. Otherwise, if the given expression does not con-
tain any of the primaries -exec, -ok or -print, the given
expression will be effectively replaced by:
( given_expression ) -print
The -user, -group, and -newer primaries each will evaluate
their respective arguments only once. Invocation of command
specified by -exec or -ok does not affect subsequent pri-
maries on the same file.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of find
when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2
**31 bytes).
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Writing out the hierarchy directory
The following commands are equivalent:
example% find .
example% find . -print
They both write out the entire directory hierarchy from the
current directory.
Example 2: Removing files
Remove all files in your home directory named a.out or *.o
that have not been accessed for a week:
example% find $HOME \( -name a.out -o -name '*.o' \) \
-atime +7 -exec rm {} \;
Example 3: Printing all file names but skipping SCCS direc-
tories
Recursively print all file names in the current directory
and below, but skipping SCCS directories:
example% find . -name SCCS -prune -o -print
Example 4: Printing all file names and the SCCS directory
name
Recursively print all file names in the current directory
and below, skipping the contents of SCCS directories, but
printing out the SCCS directory name:
example% find . -print -name SCCS -prune
Example 5: Testing for the newer file
The following command is basically equivalent to the -nt
extension to test(1):
example$ if [ -n "$(find
file1 -prune -newer file2)" ]; then
printf %s\\n "file1 is newer than file2"
Example 6: Selecting a file using 24-hour mode
The descriptions of -atime, -ctime, and -mtime use the ter-
minology n ``24-hour periods''. For example, a file accessed
at 23:59 will be selected by:
example% find . -atime -1 print
at 00:01 the next day (less than 24 hours later, not more
than one day ago). The midnight boundary between days has no
effect on the 24-hour calculation.
Example 7: Printing files matching a user's permission mode
Recursively print all file names whose permission mode
exactly matches read, write, and execute access for user,
and read and execute access for group and other:
example% find . -perm u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx
The above could alternatively be specified as follows:
example% find . -perm a=rwx,g-w,o-w
Example 8: Printing files with write access for other
Recursively print all file names whose permission includes,
but is not limited to, write access for other:
example% find . -perm -o+w
Example 9: Printing local files without descending non-local
directories
example% find . ! -local -prune -o -print
Example 10: Printing the files in the name space possessing
extended attributes
example% find . -xattr
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
variables that affect the execution of find: LANG, LC_ALL,
LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.
PATH Determine the location of the utility_name for the
-exec and -ok primaries.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 All path operands were traversed successfully.
>0 An error occurred.
FILES
/etc/passwd
password file
/etc/group
group file
/etc/dfs/fstypes
file that registers distributed file system packages
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWcsu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | Enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Stable |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
chmod(1), cpio(1), ls(1B), sh(1), test(1), stat(2),
umask(2), attributes(5), environ(5), fsattr(5), large-
file(5), standards(5)
WARNINGS
The following options are obsolete and will not be supported
in future releases:
-cpio device
Always true. Writes the current file on device in cpio
format (5120-byte records).
-ncpio device
Always true. Writes the current file on device in cpio
-c format (5120-byte records).
NOTES
When using find to determine files modified within a range
of time, use the -mtime argument before the -print argument.
Otherwise, find will give all files.
Some files that may be under the Solaris root file system
are actually mount points for virtual file systems, such as
mntfs or namefs. When comparing against a ufs file system,
they will not be selected if -mount or -xdev is specified in
the find expression.
Man(1) output converted with
man2html