Search for files in a directory hierarchy

command: find
package: GNU findutils
description: find – a powerful and flexible command to search for files in a directory hierarchy

# search files in current directory containing string "mp3"
find . -name "*mp3*"

# search for file name and directory name containing "file" and print content to stdout
find . -name "*file*" -print -exec cat {} \;

# count files recursively in current directory
find . -type f -printВ  |wc -l

# list files and directories with status changed last 10 minutes
find . -cmin -10

# list files that have been modified on your system in the past 60 minutes
find / -mmin 60 -type f

# list files over 1k, direct to xargs and print a sorted list with ls
find . -size +1k -type f -print | xargs ls -Sshl

# only dig down 2 levels of directories below the command line, useful when on top of a deep directory hierarchy
find . -size +1k -type f -print | xargs ls -Sshl

Read "man find" for more syntax

October 4, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: linux

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