Find

find(1) is a file finder.

Installation

find(1) will be pre-installed on any Linux or BSD operating system, as a POSIX utility.

Usage

find(1) identifies files and, by default, simply prints them.

find(1) can alternatively execute a command on the file name. Note that this occurs in a subshell, so functions and environment variables are not accessible to the command.

find . --exec mv ../backup/{} \;

File Name

To find all files with a name matching a pattern, try:

find . -name '*.pyc' -exec rm {} \;

File Ownership

To find all files owned by user foo, try:

find . -user foo -exec chown bar {} \;

To find all files in the group foo, try:

find . -group foo -exec chgrp bar {} \;

File Permissions

To find all files with some permission level, try:

find . -type d -perm 755

Conversely, to find all files with any other permission level, try:

find . -type f -not -perm 644 -exec chmod 644 {} \;

See also

find(1)

CategoryRicottone