man--find
FIND(1) FIND(1)
NAME
find - search for files in a directory hierarchy
SYNOPSIS
find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-D debugopts] [-Olevel] [path...] [expression]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the GNU version of find. GNU find searches the directory
tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to
right, according to the rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome
is known (the left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which point
find moves on to the next file name.
If you are using find in an environment where security is important (for example if
you are using it to search directories that are writable by other users), you should
read the "Security Considerations" chapter of the findutils documentation, which is
called Finding Files and comes with findutils. That document also includes a lot
more detail and discussion than this manual page, so you may find it a more useful
source of information.
OPTIONS
The -H, -L and -P options control the treatment of symbolic links. Command-line argu-
ments following these are taken to be names of files or directories to be examined, up
to the first argument that begins with ‘-’, or the argument ‘(’ or ‘!’. That argument
and any following arguments are taken to be the expression describing what is to be
searched for. If no paths are given, the current directory is used. If no expression
is given, the expression -print is used (but you should probably consider using
-print0 instead, anyway).
This manual page talks about ‘options’ within the expression list. These options con-
trol the behaviour of find but are specified immediately after the last path name.
The five ‘real’ options -H, -L, -P, -D and -O must appear before the first path name,
if at all. A double dash -- can also be used to signal that any remaining arguments
are not options (though ensuring that all start points begin with either ‘./’ or ‘/’
is generally safer if you use wildcards in the list of start points).
-P Never follow symbolic links. This is the default behaviour. When find exam-
ines or prints information a file, and the file is a symbolic link, the infor-
mation used shall be taken from the properties of the symbolic link itself.
-L Follow symbolic links. When find examines or prints information about files,
the information used shall be taken from the properties of the file to which
the link points, not from the link itself (unless it is a broken symbolic link
or find is unable to examine the file to which the link points). Use of this
option implies -noleaf. If you later use the -P option, -noleaf will still be
in effect. If -L is in effect and find discovers a symbolic link to a subdi-
rectory during its search, the subdirectory pointed to by the symbolic link
will be searched.
When the -L option is in effect, the -type predicate will always match against
the type of the file that a symbolic link points to rather than the link itself
(unless the symbolic link is broken). Using -L causes the -lname and -ilname
predicates always to return false.
-H Do not follow symbolic links, except while processing the command line argu-
ments. When find examines or prints information about files, the information
used shall be taken from the properties of the symbolic link itself. The only
exception to this behaviour is when a file specified on the command line is a
symbolic link, and the link can be resolved. For that situation, the informa-
tion used is taken from whatever the link points to (that is, the link is fol-
lowed). The information about the link itself is used as a fallback if the
file pointed to by the symbolic link cannot be examined. If -H is in effect
and one of the paths specified on the command line is a symbolic link to a
directory, the contents of that directory will be examined (though of course
-maxdepth 0 would prevent this).
If more than one of -H, -L and -P is specified, each overrides the others; the last
one appearing on the command line takes effect. Since it is the default, the -P
option should be considered to be in effect unless either -H or -L is specified.
GNU find frequently stats files during the processing of the command line itself,
before any searching has begun. These options also affect how those arguments are
processed. Specifically, there are a number of tests that compare files listed on the
command line against a file we are currently considering. In each case, the file
specified on the command line will have been examined and some of its properties will
have been saved. If the named file is in fact a symbolic link, and the -P option is
in effect (or if neither -H nor -L were specified), the information used for the com-
parison will be taken from the properties of the symbolic link. Otherwise, it will be
taken from the properties of the file the link points to. If find cannot follow the
link (for example because it has insufficient privileges or the link points to a
nonexistent file) the properties of the link itself will be used.
When the -H or -L options are in effect, any symbolic links listed as the argument of
-newer will be dereferenced, and the timestamp will be taken from the file to which
the symbolic link points. The same consideration applies to -newerXY, -anewer and
-cnewer.
The -follow option has a similar effect to -L, though it takes effect at the point
where it appears (that is, if -L is not used but -follow is, any symbolic links
appearing after -follow on the command line will be dereferenced, and those before it
will not).
-D debugoptions
Print diagnostic information; this can be helpful to diagnose problems with why
find is not doing what you want. The list of debug options should be comma
separated. Compatibility of the debug options is not guaranteed between
releases of findutils. For a complete list of valid debug options, see the
output of find -D help. Valid debug options include
help Explain the debugging options
tree Show the expression tree in its original and optimised form.
stat Print messages as files are examined with the stat and lstat system
calls. The find program tries to minimise such calls.
opt Prints diagnostic information relating to the optimisation of the
expression tree; see the -O option.
rates Prints a summary indicating how often each predicate succeeded or
failed.
-Olevel
Enables query optimisation. The find program reorders tests to speed up exe-
cution while preserving the overall effect; that is, predicates with side
effects are not reordered relative to each other. The optimisations performed
at each optimisation level are as follows.
0 Equivalent to optimisation level 1.
1 This is the default optimisation level and corresponds to the tradi-
tional behaviour. Expressions are reordered so that tests based only on
the names of files (for example -name and -regex) are performed first.
2 Any -type or -xtype tests are performed after any tests based only on
the names of files, but before any tests that require information from
the inode. On many modern versions of Unix, file types are returned by
readdir() and so these predicates are faster to evaluate than predicates
which need to stat the file first.
3 At this optimisation level, the full cost-based query optimiser is
enabled. The order of tests is modified so that cheap (i.e. fast) tests
are performed first and more expensive ones are performed later, if nec-
essary. Within each cost band, predicates are evaluated earlier or
later according to whether they are likely to succeed or not. For -o,
predicates which are likely to succeed are evaluated earlier, and for
-a, predicates which are likely to fail are evaluated earlier.
The cost-based optimiser has a fixed idea of how likely any given test is to
succeed. In some cases the probability takes account of the specific nature of
the test (for example, -type f is assumed to be more likely to succeed than
-type c). The cost-based optimiser is currently being evaluated. If it does
not actually improve the performance of find, it will be removed again. Con-
versely, optimisations that prove to be reliable, robust and effective may be
enabled at lower optimisation levels over time. However, the default behaviour
(i.e. optimisation level 1) will not be changed in the 4.3.x release series.
The findutils test suite runs all the tests on find at each optimisation level
and ensures that the result is the same.
EXPRESSIONS
The expression is made up of options (which affect overall operation rather than the
processing of a specific file, and always return true), tests (which return a true or
false value), and actions (which have side effects and return a true or false value),
all separated by operators. -and is assumed where the operator is omitted.
If the expression contains no actions other than -prune, -print is performed on all
files for which the expression is true.
OPTIONS
All options always return true. Except for -daystart, -follow and -regextype, the
options affect all tests, including tests specified before the option. This is
because the options are processed when the command line is parsed, while the tests
don’t do anything until files are examined. The -daystart, -follow and -regextype
options are different in this respect, and have an effect only on tests which appear
later in the command line. Therefore, for clarity, it is best to place them at the
beginning of the expression. A warning is issued if you don’t do this.
-d A synonym for -depth, for compatibility with FreeBSD, NetBSD, MacOS X and
OpenBSD.
-daystart
Measure times (for -amin, -atime, -cmin, -ctime, -mmin, and -mtime) from the
beginning of today rather than from 24 hours ago. This option only affects
tests which appear later on the command line.
-depth Process each directory’s contents before the directory itself. The -delete
action also implies -depth.
-follow
Deprecated; use the -L option instead. Dereference symbolic links. Implies
-noleaf. The -follow option affects only those tests which appear after it on
the command line. Unless the -H or -L option has been specified, the position
of the -follow option changes the behaviour of the -newer predicate; any files
listed as the argument of -newer will be dereferenced if they are symbolic
links. The same consideration applies to -newerXY, -anewer and -cnewer. Simi-
larly, the -type predicate will always match against the type of the file that
a symbolic link points to rather than the link itself. Using -follow causes
the -lname and -ilname predicates always to return false.
-help, --help
Print a summary of the command-line usage of find and exit.
-ignore_readdir_race
Normally, find will emit an error message when it fails to stat a file. If you
give this option and a file is deleted between the time find reads the name of
the file from the directory and the time it tries to stat the file, no error
message will be issued. This also applies to files or directories whose
names are given on the command line. This option takes effect at the time the
command line is read, which means that you cannot search one part of the
filesystem with this option on and part of it with this option off (if you need
to do that, you will need to issue two find commands instead, one with the
option and one without it).
-maxdepth levels
Descend at most levels (a non-negative integer) levels of directories below the
command line arguments. -maxdepth 0
means only apply the tests and actions to the command line arguments.
-mindepth levels
Do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than levels (a non-negative
integer). -mindepth 1 means process all files except the command line argu-
ments.
-mount Don’t descend directories on other filesystems. An alternate name for -xdev,
for compatibility with some other versions of find.
-noignore_readdir_race
Turns off the effect of -ignore_readdir_race.
-noleaf
Do not optimize by assuming that directories contain 2 fewer subdirectories
than their hard link count. This option is needed when searching filesystems
that do not follow the Unix directory-link convention, such as CD-ROM or MS-DOS
filesystems or AFS volume mount points. Each directory on a normal Unix
filesystem has at least 2 hard links: its name and its ‘.’ entry. Addition-
ally, its subdirectories (if any) each have a ‘..’ entry linked to that direc-
tory. When find is examining a directory, after it has statted 2 fewer subdi-
rectories than the directory’s link count, it knows that the rest of the
entries in the directory are non-directories (‘leaf’ files in the directory
tree). If only the files’ names need to be examined, there is no need to stat
them; this gives a significant increase in search speed.
-regextype type
Changes the regular expression syntax understood by -regex and -iregex tests
which occur later on the command line. Currently-implemented types are emacs
(this is the default), posix-awk, posix-basic, posix-egrep and posix-extended.
-version, --version
Print the find version number and exit.
(this is the default), posix-awk, posix-basic, posix-egrep and posix-extended.
-version, --version
Print the find version number and exit.
-warn, -nowarn
Turn warning messages on or off. These warnings apply only to the command line
usage, not to any conditions that find might encounter when it searches direc-
tories. The default behaviour corresponds to -warn if standard input is a tty,
and to -nowarn otherwise.
-xautofs
Don’t descend directories on autofs filesystems.
-xdev Don’t descend directories on other filesystems.
TESTS
Some tests, for example -newerXY and -samefile, allow comparison between the file cur-
rently being examined and some reference file specified on the command line. When
these tests are used, the interpretation of the reference file is determined by the
options -H, -L and -P and any previous -follow, but the reference file is only exam-
ined once, at the time the command line is parsed. If the reference file cannot be
examined (for example, the stat(2) system call fails for it), an error message is
issued, and find exits with a nonzero status.
Numeric arguments can be specified as
+n for greater than n,
-n for less than n,
n for exactly n.
-amin n
File was last accessed n minutes ago.
-anewer file
File was last accessed more recently than file was modified. If file is a sym-
bolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in effect, the access time of
the file it points to is always used.
-atime n
File was last accessed n*24 hours ago. When find figures out how many 24-hour
periods ago the file was last accessed, any fractional part is ignored, so to
match -atime +1, a file has to have been accessed at least two days ago.
-cmin n
File’s status was last changed n minutes ago.
-cnewer file
File’s status was last changed more recently than file was modified. If file
is a symbolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in effect, the status-
change time of the file it points to is always used.
-ctime n
File’s status was last changed n*24 hours ago. See the comments for -atime to
understand how rounding affects the interpretation of file status change times.
-empty File is empty and is either a regular file or a directory.
-executable
Matches files which are executable and directories which are searchable (in a
file name resolution sense). This takes into account access control lists and
other permissions artefacts which the -perm test ignores. This test makes use
of the access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do UID
mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement access(2) in the
client’s kernel and so cannot make use of the UID mapping information held on
the server. Because this test is based only on the result of the access(2)
system call, there is no guarantee that a file for which this test succeeds can
actually be executed.
-false Always false.
-fstype type
File is on a filesystem of type type. The valid filesystem types vary among
different versions of Unix; an incomplete list of filesystem types that are
accepted on some version of Unix or another is: ufs, 4.2, 4.3, nfs, tmp, mfs,
S51K, S52K. You can use -printf with the %F directive to see the types of your
filesystems.
-gid n File’s numeric group ID is n.
-group gname
File belongs to group gname (numeric group ID allowed).
-ilname pattern
Like -lname, but the match is case insensitive. If the -L option or the -fol-
low option is in effect, this test returns false unless the symbolic link is
broken.
-iname pattern
Like -name, but the match is case insensitive. For example, the patterns ‘fo*’
and ‘F??’ match the file names ‘Foo’, ‘FOO’, ‘foo’, ‘fOo’, etc. In these pat-
terns, unlike filename expansion by the shell, an initial ‘.’ can be matched by
‘*’. That is, find -name *bar will match the file ‘.foobar’. Please note
that you should quote patterns as a matter of course, otherwise the shell will
expand any wildcard characters in them.
-inum n
File has inode number n. It is normally easier to use the -samefile test
instead.
-ipath pattern
Behaves in the same way as -iwholename. This option is deprecated, so please
do not use it.
-iregex pattern
Like -regex, but the match is case insensitive.
-iwholename pattern
Like -wholename, but the match is case insensitive.
-links n
File has n links.
-lname pattern
File is a symbolic link whose contents match shell pattern pattern. The
metacharacters do not treat ‘/’ or ‘.’ specially. If the -L option or the
-follow option is in effect, this test returns false unless the symbolic link
is broken.
-mmin n
File’s data was last modified n minutes ago.
-mtime n
File’s data was last modified n*24 hours ago. See the comments for -atime to
understand how rounding affects the interpretation of file modification times.
-name pattern
Base of file name (the path with the leading directories removed) matches shell
pattern pattern. The metacharacters (‘*’, ‘?’, and ‘[]’) match a ‘.’ at the
start of the base name (this is a change in findutils-4.2.2; see section STAN-
DARDS CONFORMANCE below). To ignore a directory and the files under it, use
-prune; see an example in the description of -path. Braces are not recognised
as being special, despite the fact that some shells including Bash imbue braces
with a special meaning in shell patterns. The filename matching is performed
with the use of the fnmatch(3) library function. Don’t forget to enclose the
pattern in quotes in order to protect it from expansion by the shell.
-newer file
File was modified more recently than file. If file is a symbolic link and the
-H option or the -L option is in effect, the modification time of the file it
points to is always used.
-newerXY reference
Compares the timestamp of the current file with reference. The reference argu-
ment is normally the name of a file (and one of its timestamps is used for the
comparison) but it may also be a string describing an absolute time. X and Y
are placeholders for other letters, and these letters select which time belong-
ing to how reference is used for the comparison.
a The access time of the file reference
B The birth time of the file reference
c The inode status change time of reference
m The modification time of the file reference
t reference is interpreted directly as a time
Some combinations are invalid; for example, it is invalid for X to be t. Some
combinations are not implemented on all systems; for example B is not supported
on all systems. If an invalid or unsupported combination of XY is specified, a
fatal error results. Time specifications are interpreted as for the argument
to the -d option of GNU date. If you try to use the birth time of a reference
file, and the birth time cannot be determined, a fatal error message results.
If you specify a test which refers to the birth time of files being examined,
this test will fail for any files where the birth time is unknown.
-nogroup
No group corresponds to file’s numeric group ID.
-nouser
No user corresponds to file’s numeric user ID.
-path pattern
File name matches shell pattern pattern. The metacharacters do not treat ‘/’
or ‘.’ specially; so, for example,
find . -path "./sr*sc"
will print an entry for a directory called ‘./src/misc’ (if one exists). To
ignore a whole directory tree, use -prune rather than checking every file in
the tree. For example, to skip the directory ‘src/emacs’ and all files and
directories under it, and print the names of the other files found, do some-
thing like this:
find . -path ./src/emacs -prune -o -print
Note that the pattern match test applies to the whole file name, starting from
one of the start points named on the command line. It would only make sense to
use an absolute path name here if the relevant start point is also an absolute
path. This means that this command will never match anything:
find bar -path /foo/bar/myfile -print
The predicate -path is also supported by HP-UX find and will be in a forthcom-
ing version of the POSIX standard.
-perm mode
File’s permission bits are exactly mode (octal or symbolic). Since an exact
match is required, if you want to use this form for symbolic modes, you may
have to specify a rather complex mode string. For example ‘-perm g=w’ will
only match files which have mode 0020 (that is, ones for which group write per-
mission is the only permission set). It is more likely that you will want to
use the ‘/’ or ‘-’ forms, for example ‘-perm -g=w’, which matches any file with
group write permission. See the EXAMPLES section for some illustrative exam-
ples.
-perm -mode
All of the permission bits mode are set for the file. Symbolic modes are
accepted in this form, and this is usually the way in which would want to use
them. You must specify ‘u’, ‘g’ or ‘o’ if you use a symbolic mode. See the
EXAMPLES section for some illustrative examples.
-perm /mode
Any of the permission bits mode are set for the file. Symbolic modes are
accepted in this form. You must specify ‘u’, ‘g’ or ‘o’ if you use a symbolic
mode. See the EXAMPLES section for some illustrative examples. If no permis-
sion bits in mode are set, this test matches any file (the idea here is to be
consistent with the behaviour of -perm -000).
-perm +mode
Deprecated, old way of searching for files with any of the permission bits in
mode set. You should use -perm /mode instead. Trying to use the ‘+’ syntax
with symbolic modes will yield surprising results. For example, ‘+u+x’ is a
valid symbolic mode (equivalent to +u,+x, i.e. 0111) and will therefore not be
evaluated as -perm +mode but instead as the exact mode specifier -perm mode and
so it matches files with exact permissions 0111 instead of files with any exe-
cute bit set. If you found this paragraph confusing, you’re not alone - just
use -perm /mode. This form of the -perm test is deprecated because the POSIX
specification requires the interpretation of a leading ‘+’ as being part of a
symbolic mode, and so we switched to using ‘/’ instead.
-readable
Matches files which are readable. This takes into account access control lists
and other permissions artefacts which the -perm test ignores. This test makes
use of the access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do
UID mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement access(2) in the
client’s kernel and so cannot make use of the UID mapping information held on
the server.
-regex pattern
File name matches regular expression pattern. This is a match on the whole
path, not a search. For example, to match a file named ‘./fubar3’, you can use
the regular expression ‘.*bar.’ or ‘.*b.*3’, but not ‘f.*r3’. The regular
expressions understood by find are by default Emacs Regular Expressions, but
this can be changed with the -regextype option.
-samefile name
File refers to the same inode as name. When -L is in effect, this can include
symbolic links.
-size n[cwbkMG]
File uses n units of space. The following suffixes can be used:
‘b’ for 512-byte blocks (this is the default if no suffix is used)
‘c’ for bytes
‘w’ for two-byte words
‘k’ for Kilobytes (units of 1024 bytes)
‘M’ for Megabytes (units of 1048576 bytes)
‘G’ for Gigabytes (units of 1073741824 bytes)
The size does not count indirect blocks, but it does count blocks in sparse
files that are not actually allocated. Bear in mind that the ‘%k’ and ‘%b’
format specifiers of -printf handle sparse files differently. The ‘b’ suffix
always denotes 512-byte blocks and never 1 Kilobyte blocks, which is different
to the behaviour of -ls.
-true Always true.
-type c
File is of type c:
b block (buffered) special
c character (unbuffered) special
d directory
p named pipe (FIFO)
f regular file
l symbolic link; this is never true if the -L option or the -follow option
is in effect, unless the symbolic link is broken. If you want to search
for symbolic links when -L is in effect, use -xtype.
s socket
D door (Solaris)
-uid n File’s numeric user ID is n.
-used n
File was last accessed n days after its status was last changed.
-user uname
File is owned by user uname (numeric user ID allowed).
-wholename pattern
See -path. This alternative is less portable than -path.
-writable
Matches files which are writable. This takes into account access control lists
and other permissions artefacts which the -perm test ignores. This test makes
use of the access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do
UID mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement access(2) in the
client’s kernel and so cannot make use of the UID mapping information held on
the server.
-xtype c
The same as -type unless the file is a symbolic link. For symbolic links: if
the -H or -P option was specified, true if the file is a link to a file of type
c; if the -L option has been given, true if c is ‘l’. In other words, for sym-
bolic links, -xtype checks the type of the file that -type does not check.
-context pattern
(SELinux only) Security context of the file matches glob pattern.
ACTIONS
-delete
Delete files; true if removal succeeded. If the removal failed, an error mes-
sage is issued. If -delete fails, find’s exit status will be nonzero (when it
eventually exits). Use of -delete automatically turns on the ‘-depth’ option.
Warnings: Don’t forget that the find command line is evaluated as an expres-
sion, so putting -delete first will make find try to delete everything below
the starting points you specified. When testing a find command line that you
later intend to use with -delete, you should explicitly specify -depth in order
to avoid later surprises. Because -delete implies -depth, you cannot usefully
use -prune and -delete together.
-exec command ;
Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All following arguments to find
are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting of ‘;’ is
encountered. The string ‘{}’ is replaced by the current file name being pro-
cessed everywhere it occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in argu-
ments where it is alone, as in some versions of find. Both of these construc-
tions might need to be escaped (with a ‘\’) or quoted to protect them from
expansion by the shell. See the EXAMPLES section for examples of the use of
the -exec option. The specified command is run once for each matched file.
The command is executed in the starting directory. There are unavoidable
security problems surrounding use of the -exec action; you should use the
-execdir option instead.
-exec command {} +
This variant of the -exec action runs the specified command on the selected
files, but the command line is built by appending each selected file name at
the end; the total number of invocations of the command will be much less than
the number of matched files. The command line is built in much the same way
that xargs builds its command lines. Only one instance of ‘{}’ is allowed
within the command. The command is executed in the starting directory.
-execdir command ;
-execdir command {} +
Like -exec, but the specified command is run from the subdirectory containing
the matched file, which is not normally the directory in which you started
find. This a much more secure method for invoking commands, as it avoids race
conditions during resolution of the paths to the matched files. As with the
-exec action, the ‘+’ form of -execdir will build a command line to process
more than one matched file, but any given invocation of command will only list
files that exist in the same subdirectory. If you use this option, you must
ensure that your $PATH environment variable does not reference ‘.’; otherwise,
an attacker can run any commands they like by leaving an appropriately-named
file in a directory in which you will run -execdir. The same applies to having
entries in $PATH which are empty or which are not absolute directory names.
-fls file
True; like -ls but write to file like -fprint. The output file is always cre-
ated, even if the predicate is never matched. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES sec-
tion for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-fprint file
True; print the full file name into file file. If file does not exist when
find is run, it is created; if it does exist, it is truncated. The file names
‘/dev/stdout’ and ‘/dev/stderr’ are handled specially; they refer to the stan-
dard output and standard error output, respectively. The output file is always
created, even if the predicate is never matched. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-fprint0 file
True; like -print0 but write to file like -fprint. The output file is always
created, even if the predicate is never matched. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-fprintf file format
True; like -printf but write to file like -fprint. The output file is always
created, even if the predicate is never matched. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-ls True; list current file in ls -dils format on standard output. The block
counts are of 1K blocks, unless the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is
set, in which case 512-byte blocks are used. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section
for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-ok command ;
Like -exec but ask the user first. If the user agrees, run the command. Oth-
erwise just return false. If the command is run, its standard input is redi-
rected from /dev/null.
The response to the prompt is matched against a pair of regular expressions to
determine if it is an affirmative or negative response. This regular expres-
sion is obtained from the system if the ‘POSIXLY_CORRECT’ environment variable
is set, or otherwise from find’s message translations. If the system has no
suitable definition, find’s own definition will be used. In either case, the
interpretation of the regular expression itself will be affected by the envi-
ronment variables ’LC_CTYPE’ (character classes) and ’LC_COLLATE’ (character
ranges and equivalence classes).
-okdir command ;
Like -execdir but ask the user first in the same way as for -ok. If the user
does not agree, just return false. If the command is run, its standard input
is redirected from /dev/null.
-print True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed by a newline.
If you are piping the output of find into another program and there is the
faintest possibility that the files which you are searching for might contain a
newline, then you should seriously consider using the -print0 option instead of
-print. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual
characters in filenames are handled.
-print0
True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed by a null char-
acter (instead of the newline character that -print uses). This allows file
names that contain newlines or other types of white space to be correctly
interpreted by programs that process the find output. This option corresponds
to the -0 option of xargs.
-printf format
True; print format on the standard output, interpreting ‘\’ escapes and ‘%’
directives. Field widths and precisions can be specified as with the ‘printf’
C function. Please note that many of the fields are printed as %s rather than
%d, and this may mean that flags don’t work as you might expect. This also
means that the ‘-’ flag does work (it forces fields to be left-aligned).
Unlike -print, -printf does not add a newline at the end of the string. The
escapes and directives are:
\a Alarm bell.
\b Backspace.
\c Stop printing from this format immediately and flush the output.
\f Form feed.
\n Newline.
\r Carriage return.
\t Horizontal tab.
\v Vertical tab.
\0 ASCII NUL.
\\ A literal backslash (‘\’).
\NNN The character whose ASCII code is NNN (octal).
A ‘\’ character followed by any other character is treated as an ordinary char-
acter, so they both are printed.
%% A literal percent sign.
%a File’s last access time in the format returned by the C ‘ctime’ func-
tion.
%Ak File’s last access time in the format specified by k, which is either
‘@’ or a directive for the C ‘strftime’ function. The possible values
for k are listed below; some of them might not be available on all sys-
tems, due to differences in ‘strftime’ between systems.
@ seconds since Jan. 1, 1970, 00:00 GMT, with fractional part.
Time fields:
H hour (00..23)
I hour (01..12)
k hour ( 0..23)
l hour ( 1..12)
M minute (00..59)
p locale’s AM or PM
r time, 12-hour (hh:mm:ss [AP]M)
S Second (00.00 .. 61.00). There is a fractional part.
T time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss)
+ Date and time, separated by ‘+’, for example
‘2004-04-28+22:22:05.0’. This is a GNU extension. The time is
given in the current timezone (which may be affected by setting
the TZ environment variable). The seconds field includes a
fractional part.
X locale’s time representation (H:M:S)
Z time zone (e.g., EDT), or nothing if no time zone is deter-
minable
Date fields:
a locale’s abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
A locale’s full weekday name, variable length (Sunday..Saturday)
b locale’s abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)
B locale’s full month name, variable length (January..December)
c locale’s date and time (Sat Nov 04 12:02:33 EST 1989). The for-
mat is the same as for ctime(3) and so to preserve compatibility
with that format, there is no fractional part in the seconds
field.
d day of month (01..31)
D date (mm/dd/yy)
h same as b
j day of year (001..366)
m month (01..12)
U week number of year with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
w day of week (0..6)
W week number of year with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
x locale’s date representation (mm/dd/yy)
y last two digits of year (00..99)
Y year (1970...)
%b The amount of disk space used for this file in 512-byte blocks. Since
disk space is allocated in multiples of the filesystem block size this
is usually greater than %s/512, but it can also be smaller if the file
is a sparse file.
%c File’s last status change time in the format returned by the C ‘ctime’
function.
%Ck File’s last status change time in the format specified by k, which is
the same as for %A.
%d File’s depth in the directory tree; 0 means the file is a command line
argument.
%D The device number on which the file exists (the st_dev field of struct
stat), in decimal.
%f File’s name with any leading directories removed (only the last ele-
ment).
%F Type of the filesystem the file is on; this value can be used for
-fstype.
%g File’s group name, or numeric group ID if the group has no name.
%G File’s numeric group ID.
%h Leading directories of file’s name (all but the last element). If the
file name contains no slashes (since it is in the current directory) the
%h specifier expands to ".".
%H Command line argument under which file was found.
%i File’s inode number (in decimal).
%k The amount of disk space used for this file in 1K blocks. Since disk
space is allocated in multiples of the filesystem block size this is
usually greater than %s/1024, but it can also be smaller if the file is
a sparse file.
%l Object of symbolic link (empty string if file is not a symbolic link).
%m File’s permission bits (in octal). This option uses the ‘traditional’
numbers which most Unix implementations use, but if your particular
implementation uses an unusual ordering of octal permissions bits, you
will see a difference between the actual value of the file’s mode and
the output of %m. Normally you will want to have a leading zero on
this number, and to do this, you should use the
ple, ‘%
%M File’s permissions (in symbolic form, as for ls). This directive is
supported in findutils 4.2.5 and later.
%n Number of hard links to file.
%p File’s name.
%P File’s name with the name of the command line argument under which it
was found removed.
%s File’s size in bytes.
%S File’s sparseness. This is calculated as (BLOCKSIZE*st_blocks /
st_size). The exact value you will get for an ordinary file of a cer-
tain length is system-dependent. However, normally sparse files will
have values less than 1.0, and files which use indirect blocks may have
a value which is greater than 1.0. The value used for BLOCKSIZE is
system-dependent, but is usually 512 bytes. If the file size is zero,
the value printed is undefined. On systems which lack support for
st_blocks, a file’s sparseness is assumed to be 1.0.
%t File’s last modification time in the format returned by the C ‘ctime’
function.
%Tk File’s last modification time in the format specified by k, which is the
same as for %A.
%u File’s user name, or numeric user ID if the user has no name.
%U File’s numeric user ID.
%y File’s type (like in ls -l), U=unknown type (shouldn’t happen)
%Y File’s type (like %y), plus follow symlinks: L=loop, N=nonexistent
%Z (SELinux only) file’s security context.
A ‘%’ character followed by any other character is discarded, but the other
character is printed (don’t rely on this, as further format characters may be
introduced). A ‘%’ at the end of the format argument causes undefined
behaviour since there is no following character. In some locales, it may hide
your door keys, while in others it may remove the final page from the novel you
are reading.
The %m and %d directives support the
tives do not, even if they print numbers. Numeric directives that do not sup-
port these flags include G, U, b, D, k and n. The ‘-’ format flag is supported
and changes the alignment of a field from right-justified (which is the
default) to left-justified.
See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual characters
in filenames are handled.
-prune True; if the file is a directory, do not descend into it. If -depth is given,
false; no effect. Because -delete implies -depth, you cannot usefully use
-prune and -delete together.
-quit Exit immediately. No child processes will be left running, but no more paths
specified on the command line will be processed. For example, find /tmp/foo
/tmp/bar -print -quit will print only /tmp/foo. Any command lines which have
been built up with -execdir ... {} + will be invoked before find exits. The
exit status may or may not be zero, depending on whether an error has already
occurred.
UNUSUAL FILENAMES
Many of the actions of find result in the printing of data which is under the control
of other users. This includes file names, sizes, modification times and so forth.
File names are a potential problem since they can contain any character except ‘\0’
and ‘/’. Unusual characters in file names can do unexpected and often undesirable
things to your terminal (for example, changing the settings of your function keys on
some terminals). Unusual characters are handled differently by various actions, as
described below.
-print0, -fprint0
Always print the exact filename, unchanged, even if the output is going to a
terminal.
-ls, -fls
Unusual characters are always escaped. White space, backslash, and double
quote characters are printed using C-style escaping (for example ‘\f’, ‘\"’).
Other unusual characters are printed using an octal escape. Other printable
characters (for -ls and -fls these are the characters between octal 041 and
0176) are printed as-is.
-printf, -fprintf
If the output is not going to a terminal, it is printed as-is. Otherwise, the
result depends on which directive is in use. The directives %D, %F, %g, %G,
%H, %Y, and %y expand to values which are not under control of files’ owners,
and so are printed as-is. The directives %a, %b, %c, %d, %i, %k, %m, %M, %n,
%s, %t, %u and %U have values which are under the control of files’ owners but
which cannot be used to send arbitrary data to the terminal, and so these are
printed as-is. The directives %f, %h, %l, %p and %P are quoted. This quoting
is performed in the same way as for GNU ls. This is not the same quoting mech-
anism as the one used for -ls and -fls. If you are able to decide what format
to use for the output of find then it is normally better to use ‘\0’ as a ter-
minator than to use newline, as file names can contain white space and newline
characters. The setting of the ‘LC_CTYPE’ environment variable is used to
determine which characters need to be quoted.
-print, -fprint
Quoting is handled in the same way as for -printf and -fprintf. If you are
using find in a script or in a situation where the matched files might have
arbitrary names, you should consider using -print0 instead of -print.
The -ok and -okdir actions print the current filename as-is. This may change in a
future release.
OPERATORS
Listed in order of decreasing precedence:
( expr )
Force precedence. Since parentheses are special to the shell, you will nor-
mally need to quote them. Many of the examples in this manual page use back-
slashes for this purpose: ‘\(...\)’ instead of ‘(...)’.
! expr True if expr is false. This character will also usually need protection from
interpretation by the shell.
-not expr
Same as ! expr, but not POSIX compliant.
expr1 expr2
Two expressions in a row are taken to be joined with an implied "and"; expr2 is
not evaluated if expr1 is false.
expr1 -a expr2
Same as expr1 expr2.
expr1 -and expr2
Same as expr1 expr2, but not POSIX compliant.
expr1 -o expr2
Or; expr2 is not evaluated if expr1 is true.
expr1 -or expr2
Same as expr1 -o expr2, but not POSIX compliant.
expr1 , expr2
List; both expr1 and expr2 are always evaluated. The value of expr1 is dis-
carded; the value of the list is the value of expr2. The comma operator can be
useful for searching for several different types of thing, but traversing the
filesystem hierarchy only once. The -fprintf action can be used to list the
various matched items into several different output files.
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
For closest compliance to the POSIX standard, you should set the POSIXLY_CORRECT envi-
ronment variable. The following options are specified in the POSIX standard (IEEE Std
1003.1, 2003 Edition):
-H This option is supported.
-L This option is supported.
-name This option is supported, but POSIX conformance depends on the POSIX confor-
mance of the system’s fnmatch(3) library function. As of findutils-4.2.2,
shell metacharacters (‘*’, ‘?’ or ‘[]’ for example) will match a leading ‘.’,
because IEEE PASC interpretation 126 requires this. This is a change from
previous versions of findutils.
-type Supported. POSIX specifies ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘l’, ‘p’, ‘f’ and ‘s’. GNU find
also supports ‘D’, representing a Door, where the OS provides these.
-ok Supported. Interpretation of the response is according to the "yes" and "no"
patterns selected by setting the ‘LC_MESSAGES’ environment variable. When the
‘POSIXLY_CORRECT’ environment variable is set, these patterns are taken sys-
tem’s definition of a positive (yes) or negative (no) response. See the sys-
tem’s documentation for nl_langinfo(3), in particular YESEXPR and NOEXPR.
When ‘POSIXLY_CORRECT’ is not set, the patterns are instead taken from find’s
own message catalogue.
-newer Supported. If the file specified is a symbolic link, it is always derefer-
enced. This is a change from previous behaviour, which used to take the rele-
vant time from the symbolic link; see the HISTORY section below.
-perm Supported. If the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is not set, some mode
arguments (for example +a+x) which are not valid in POSIX are supported for
backward-compatibility.
Other predicates
The predicates -atime, -ctime, -depth, -group, -links, -mtime, -nogroup,
-nouser, -print, -prune, -size, -user and -xdev ‘-atime’, ‘-ctime’, ‘-depth’,
‘-group’, ‘-links’, ‘-mtime’, ‘-nogroup’, ‘-nouser’, ‘-perm’, ‘-print’,
‘-prune’, ‘-size’, ‘-user’ and ‘-xdev’ are all supported.
The POSIX standard specifies parentheses ‘(’, ‘)’, negation ‘!’ and the ‘and’ and ‘or’
operators ( -a, -o).
All other options, predicates, expressions and so forth are extensions beyond the
POSIX standard. Many of these extensions are not unique to GNU find, however.
The POSIX standard requires that find detects loops:
The find utility shall detect infinite loops; that is, entering a previously
visited directory that is an ancestor of the last file encountered. When it
detects an infinite loop, find shall write a diagnostic message to standard
error and shall either recover its position in the hierarchy or terminate.
GNU find complies with these requirements. The link count of directories which con-
tain entries which are hard links to an ancestor will often be lower than they other-
wise should be. This can mean that GNU find will sometimes optimise away the visiting
of a subdirectory which is actually a link to an ancestor. Since find does not actu-
ally enter such a subdirectory, it is allowed to avoid emitting a diagnostic message.
Although this behaviour may be somewhat confusing, it is unlikely that anybody actu-
ally depends on this behaviour. If the leaf optimisation has been turned off with
-noleaf, the directory entry will always be examined and the diagnostic message will
be issued where it is appropriate. Symbolic links cannot be used to create filesystem
cycles as such, but if the -L option or the -follow option is in use, a diagnostic
message is issued when find encounters a loop of symbolic links. As with loops con-
taining hard links, the leaf optimisation will often mean that find knows that it
doesn’t need to call stat() or chdir() on the symbolic link, so this diagnostic is
frequently not necessary.
The -d option is supported for compatibility with various BSD systems, but you should
use the POSIX-compliant option -depth instead.
The POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable does not affect the behaviour of the -regex
or -iregex tests because those tests aren’t specified in the POSIX standard.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
LANG Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset
or null.
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other inter-
nationalization variables.
LC_COLLATE
The POSIX standard specifies that this variable affects the pattern matching to
be used for the -name option. GNU find uses the fnmatch(3) library function,
and so support for ‘LC_COLLATE’ depends on the system library. This variable
also affects the interpretation of the response to -ok; while the ‘LC_MESSAGES’
variable selects the actual pattern used to interpret the response to -ok, the
interpretation of any bracket expressions in the pattern will be affected by
‘LC_COLLATE’.
LC_CTYPE
This variable affects the treatment of character classes used in regular
expressions and also with the -name test, if the system’s fnmatch(3) library
function supports this. This variable also affects the interpretation of any
character classes in the regular expressions used to interpret the response to
the prompt issued by -ok. The ‘LC_CTYPE’ environment variable will also affect
which characters are considered to be unprintable when filenames are printed;
see the section UNUSUAL FILENAMES.
LC_MESSAGES
Determines the locale to be used for internationalised messages. If the
‘POSIXLY_CORRECT’ environment variable is set, this also determines the inter-
pretation of the response to the prompt made by the -ok action.
NLSPATH
Determines the location of the internationalisation message catalogues.
PATH Affects the directories which are searched to find the executables invoked by
-exec, -execdir, -ok and -okdir.
POSIXLY_CORRECT
Determines the block size used by -ls and -fls. If POSIXLY_CORRECT is set,
blocks are units of 512 bytes. Otherwise they are units of 1024 bytes.
Setting this variable also turns off warning messages (that is, implies
-nowarn) by default, because POSIX requires that apart from the output for -ok,
all messages printed on stderr are diagnostics and must result in a non-zero
exit status.
When POSIXLY_CORRECT is not set, -perm +zzz is treated just like -perm /zzz if
+zzz is not a valid symbolic mode. When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, such con-
structs are treated as an error.
When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, the response to the prompt made by the -ok action
is interpreted according to the system’s message catalogue, as opposed to
according to find’s own message translations.
TZ Affects the time zone used for some of the time-related format directives of
-printf and -fprintf.
EXAMPLES
find /tmp -name core -type f -print | xargs /bin/rm -f
Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them. Note that this
will work incorrectly if there are any filenames containing newlines, single or double
quotes, or spaces.
find /tmp -name core -type f -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -f
Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them, processing file-
names in such a way that file or directory names containing single or double quotes,
spaces or newlines are correctly handled. The -name test comes before the -type test
in order to avoid having to call stat(2) on every file.
find . -type f -exec file '{}' \;
Runs ‘file’ on every file in or below the current directory. Notice that the braces
are enclosed in single quote marks to protect them from interpretation as shell script
punctuation. The semicolon is similarly protected by the use of a backslash, though
single quotes could have been used in that case also.
find / \( -perm -4000 -fprintf /root/suid.txt '%#m %u %p\n' \) , \
\( -size +100M -fprintf /root/big.txt '%-10s %p\n' \)
Traverse the filesystem just once, listing setuid files and directories into
/root/suid.txt and large files into /root/big.txt.
find $HOME -mtime 0
Search for files in your home directory which have been modified in the last twenty-
four hours. This command works this way because the time since each file was last
modified is divided by 24 hours and any remainder is discarded. That means that to
match -mtime 0, a file will have to have a modification in the past which is less than
24 hours ago.
find /sbin /usr/sbin -executable \! -readable -print
Search for files which are executable but not readable.
find . -perm 664
Search for files which have read and write permission for their owner, and group, but
which other users can read but not write to. Files which meet these criteria but have
other permissions bits set (for example if someone can execute the file) will not be
matched.
find . -perm -664
Search for files which have read and write permission for their owner and group, and
which other users can read, without regard to the presence of any extra permission
bits (for example the executable bit). This will match a file which has mode 0777,
for example.
find . -perm /222
Search for files which are writable by somebody (their owner, or their group, or any-
body else).
find . -perm /220
find . -perm /u+w,g+w
find . -perm /u=w,g=w
All three of these commands do the same thing, but the first one uses the octal repre-
sentation of the file mode, and the other two use the symbolic form. These commands
all search for files which are writable by either their owner or their group. The
files don’t have to be writable by both the owner and group to be matched; either will
do.
find . -perm -220
find . -perm -g+w,u+w
Both these commands do the same thing; search for files which are writable by both
their owner and their group.
find . -perm -444 -perm /222 ! -perm /111
find . -perm -a+r -perm /a+w ! -perm /a+x
These two commands both search for files that are readable for everybody ( -perm -444
or -perm -a+r), have at least one write bit set ( -perm /222 or -perm /a+w) but are
not executable for anybody ( ! -perm /111 and ! -perm /a+x respectively).
cd /source-dir
find . -name .snapshot -prune -o \( \! -name *~ -print0 \)|
cpio -pmd0 /dest-dir
This command copies the contents of /source-dir to /dest-dir, but omits files and
directories named .snapshot (and anything in them). It also omits files or directo-
ries whose name ends in ~, but not their contents. The construct -prune -o \( ...
-print0 \) is quite common. The idea here is that the expression before -prune
matches things which are to be pruned. However, the -prune action itself returns
true, so the following -o ensures that the right hand side is evaluated only for those
directories which didn’t get pruned (the contents of the pruned directories are not
even visited, so their contents are irrelevant). The expression on the right hand
side of the -o is in parentheses only for clarity. It emphasises that the -print0
action takes place only for things that didn’t have -prune applied to them. Because
the default ‘and’ condition between tests binds more tightly than -o, this is the
default anyway, but the parentheses help to show what is going on.
find repo/ -exec test -d {}/.svn -o -d {}/.git -o -d {}/CVS ; \
-print -prune
Given the following directory of projects and their associated SCM administrative
directories, perform an efficient search for the projects’ roots:
repo/project1/CVS
repo/gnu/project2/.svn
repo/gnu/project3/.svn
repo/gnu/project3/src/.svn
repo/project4/.git
In this example, -prune prevents unnecessary descent into directories that have
already been discovered (for example we do not search project3/src because we already
found project3/.svn), but ensures sibling directories (project2 and project3) are
found.
EXIT STATUS
find exits with status 0 if all files are processed successfully, greater than 0 if
errors occur. This is deliberately a very broad description, but if the return value
is non-zero, you should not rely on the correctness of the results of find.
SEE ALSO
locate(1), locatedb(5), updatedb(1), xargs(1), chmod(1), fnmatch(3), regex(7),
stat(2), lstat(2), ls(1), printf(3), strftime(3), ctime(3), Finding Files (on-line in
Info, or printed).
HISTORY
As of findutils-4.2.2, shell metacharacters (‘*’, ‘?’ or ‘[]’ for example) used in
filename patterns will match a leading ‘.’, because IEEE POSIX interpretation 126
requires this.
The syntax -perm +MODE was deprecated in findutils-4.2.21, in favour of -perm /MODE.
As of findutils-4.3.3, -perm /000 now matches all files instead of none.
Nanosecond-resolution timestamps were implemented in findutils-4.3.3.
As of findutils-4.3.11, the -delete action sets find’s exit status to a nonzero value
when it fails. However, find will not exit immediately. Previously, find’s exit sta-
tus was unaffected by the failure of -delete.
Feature Added in Also occurs in
-newerXY 4.3.3 BSD
-D 4.3.1
-O 4.3.1
-readable 4.3.0
-writable 4.3.0
-executable 4.3.0
-regextype 4.2.24
-exec ... + 4.2.12 POSIX
-execdir 4.2.12 BSD
-okdir 4.2.12
-samefile 4.2.11
-H 4.2.5 POSIX
-L 4.2.5 POSIX
-P 4.2.5 BSD
-delete 4.2.3
-quit 4.2.3
-d 4.2.3 BSD
-wholename 4.2.0
-iwholename 4.2.0
-ignore_readdir_race 4.2.0
-fls 4.0
-ilname 3.8
-iname 3.8
-ipath 3.8
-iregex 3.8
NON-BUGS
$ find . -name *.c -print
find: paths must precede expression
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [express
ion]
This happens because *.c has been expanded by the shell resulting in find actually
receiving a command line like this:
find . -name bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c -print
That command is of course not going to work. Instead of doing things this way, you
should enclose the pattern in quotes or escape the wildcard:
$ find . -name '*.c' -print
$ find . -name \*.c -print
BUGS
There are security problems inherent in the behaviour that the POSIX standard speci-
fies for find, which therefore cannot be fixed. For example, the -exec action is
inherently insecure, and -execdir should be used instead. Please see Finding Files
for more information.
The environment variable LC_COLLATE has no effect on the -ok action.
The best way to report a bug is to use the form at http://savan-
nah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils. The reason for this is that you will then be able
to track progress in fixing the problem. Other comments about find(1) and about the
findutils package in general can be sent to the bug-findutils mailing list. To join
the list, send email to [email protected].
FIND(1)
(END)