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FIND(1) General Commands Manual FIND(1)
find - search for files in a directory hierarchy
find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-D debugopts] [-Olevel] [starting-point...]
[expression]
.
This manual page documents the GNU version of find. GNU find
searches the directory tree rooted at each given starting-point 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 no
starting-point is specified, `.' is assumed.
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.
The -H, -L and -P options control the treatment of symbolic links.
Command-line arguments 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 control 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 -- could theoretically be used to signal that
any remaining arguments are not options, but this does not really
work due to the way find determines the end of the following path
arguments: it does that by reading until an expression argument
comes (which also starts with a `-'). Now, if a path argument
would start with a `-', then find would treat it as expression
argument instead. Thus, to ensure that all start points are taken
as such, and especially to prevent that wildcard patterns expanded
by the calling shell are not mistakenly treated as expression
arguments, it is generally safer to prefix wildcards or dubious
path names with either `./' or to use absolute path names starting
with '/'. Alternatively, it is generally safe though non-portable
to use the GNU option -files0-from to pass arbitrary starting
points to find.
-P Never follow symbolic links. This is the default
behaviour. When find examines or prints information about
files, and the file is a symbolic link, the information
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 subdirectory 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). Actions that can cause symbolic
links to become broken while find is executing (for example
-delete) can give rise to confusing behaviour. Using -L
causes the -lname and -ilname predicates always to return
false.
-H Do not follow symbolic links, except while processing the
command line arguments. 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 information used is
taken from whatever the link points to (that is, the link
is followed). 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 comparison 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 debugopts
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
exec Show diagnostic information relating to -exec,
-execdir, -ok and -okdir
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.
search Navigate the directory tree verbosely.
stat Print messages as files are examined with the stat
and lstat system calls. The find program tries to
minimise such calls.
tree Show the expression tree in its original and
optimized form.
all Enable all of the other debug options (but help).
help Explain the debugging options.
-Olevel
Enables query optimisation. The find program reorders
tests to speed up execution 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 traditional 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. If you use the -fstype FOO
predicate and specify a filesystem type FOO which is
not known (that is, present in `/etc/mtab') at the
time find starts, that predicate is equivalent to
-false.
3 At this optimisation level, the full cost-based
query optimizer 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 necessary. 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 optimizer 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 optimizer is currently being
evaluated. If it does not actually improve the performance
of find, it will be removed again. Conversely,
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.
The re-ordering of operations performed by the cost-based
optimizer can result in user-visible behaviour change. For
example, the -readable and -empty predicates are sensitive
to re-ordering. If they are run in the order -empty
-readable, an error message will be issued for unreadable
directories. If they are run in the order -readable -empty
no error message will be issued. This is the reason why
such operation re-ordering is not performed at the default
optimisation level.
The part of the command line after the list of starting points is
the expression. This is a kind of query specification describing
how we match files and what we do with the files that were
matched. An expression is composed of a sequence of things:
Tests Tests return a true or false value, usually on the basis of
some property of a file we are considering. The -empty
test for example is true only when the current file is
empty.
Actions
Actions have side effects (such as printing something on
the standard output) and return either true or false,
usually based on whether or not they are successful. The
-print action for example prints the name of the current
file on the standard output.
Global options
Global options affect the operation of tests and actions
specified on any part of the command line. Global options
always return true. The -depth option for example makes
find traverse the file system in a depth-first order.
Positional options
Positional options affect only tests or actions which
follow them. Positional options always return true. The
-regextype option for example is positional, specifying the
regular expression dialect for regular expressions
occurring later on the command line.
Operators
Operators join together the other items within the
expression. They include for example -o (meaning logical
OR) and -a (meaning logical AND). Where an operator is
missing, -a is assumed.
The -print action is performed on all files for which the whole
expression is true, unless it contains an action other than -prune
or -quit. Actions which inhibit the default -print are -delete,
-exec, -execdir, -fls, -fprint, -fprint0, -fprintf, -ls, -ok,
-okdir, -print0, -printf and -print.
The -delete action also acts like an option (since it implies
-depth).
POSITIONAL OPTIONS
Positional options always return true. They affect only tests
occurring later on the command line.
-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.
-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. Similarly, 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.
-regextype type
Changes the regular expression syntax understood by -regex
and -iregex tests which occur later on the command line.
To see which regular expression types are known, use
-regextype help. The Texinfo documentation (see SEE ALSO)
explains the meaning of and differences between the various
types of regular expression. If you do not use this
option, find behaves as if the regular expression type
emacs had been specified.
-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 directories. The default
behaviour corresponds to -warn if standard input is a tty,
and to -nowarn otherwise. If a warning message relating to
command-line usage is produced, the exit status of find is
not affected. If the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable
is set, and -warn is also used, it is not specified which,
if any, warnings will be active.
GLOBAL OPTIONS
Global options always return true. Global options take effect
even for tests which occur earlier on the command line. To
prevent confusion, global options should be specified on the
command-line after the list of start points, just before the first
test, positional option or action. If you specify a global option
in some other place, find will issue a warning message explaining
that this can be confusing.
The global options occur after the list of start points, and so
are not the same kind of option as -L, for example.
-d A synonym for -depth, for compatibility with FreeBSD,
NetBSD, MacOS X and OpenBSD.
-depth Process each directory's contents before the directory
itself. The -delete action also implies -depth.
-files0-from file
Read the starting points from file instead of getting them
on the command line. In contrast to the known limitations
of passing starting points via arguments on the command
line, namely the limitation of the amount of file names,
and the inherent ambiguity of file names clashing with
option names, using this option allows to safely pass an
arbitrary number of starting points to find.
Using this option and passing starting points on the
command line is mutually exclusive, and is therefore not
allowed at the same time.
The file argument is mandatory. One can use -files0-from -
to read the list of starting points from the standard input
stream, and e.g. from a pipe. In this case, the actions
-ok and -okdir are not allowed, because they would
obviously interfere with reading from standard input in
order to get a user confirmation.
The starting points in file have to be separated by ASCII
NUL characters. Two consecutive NUL characters, i.e., a
starting point with a Zero-length file name is not allowed
and will lead to an error diagnostic followed by a non-Zero
exit code later.
In the case the given file is empty, find does not process
any starting point and therefore will exit immediately
after parsing the program arguments. This is unlike the
standard invocation where find assumes the current
directory as starting point if no path argument is passed.
The processing of the starting points is otherwise as
usual, e.g. find will recurse into subdirectories unless
otherwise prevented. To process only the starting points,
one can additionally pass -maxdepth 0.
Further notes: if a file is listed more than once in the
input file, it is unspecified whether it is visited more
than once. If the file is mutated during the operation of
find, the result is unspecified as well. Finally, the seek
position within the named file at the time find exits, be
it with -quit or in any other way, is also unspecified. By
"unspecified" here is meant that it may or may not work or
do any specific thing, and that the behavior may change
from platform to platform, or from findutils release to
release.
-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).
Furthermore, find with the -ignore_readdir_race option will
ignore errors of the -delete action in the case the file
has disappeared since the parent directory was read: it
will not output an error diagnostic, and the return code of
the -delete action will be true.
-maxdepth levels
Descend at most levels (a non-negative integer) levels of
directories below the starting-points. Using -maxdepth 0
means only apply the tests and actions to the starting-
points themselves.
-mindepth levels
Do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than
levels (a non-negative integer). Using -mindepth 1 means
process all files except the starting-points.
-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. Additionally, its
subdirectories (if any) each have a `..' entry linked to
that directory. When find is examining a directory, after
it has statted 2 fewer subdirectories 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.
-version, --version
Print the find version number and exit.
-xdev Don't descend directories on other filesystems.
TESTS
Some tests, for example -newerXY and -samefile, allow comparison
between the file currently 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 examined 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.
A numeric argument n can be specified to tests (like -amin,
-mtime, -gid, -inum, -links, -size, -uid and -used) as
+n for greater than n,
-n for less than n,
n for exactly n.
Supported tests:
-amin n
File was last accessed less than, more than or exactly n
minutes ago.
-anewer reference
Like -newer, but test if the time of the last access of the
current file is more recent than that of the last data
modification of the reference file. If reference is a
symbolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in
effect, then the time of the last data modification of the
file it points to is always used.
-atime n
File was last accessed less than, more than or exactly 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 less than, more than or
exactly n minutes ago.
-cnewer reference
Like -newer, but test if the time of the last status change
of the current file is more recent than that of the last
data modification of the reference file. If reference is a
symbolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in
effect, then the time of the last data modification of the
file it points to is always used.
-ctime n
File's status was last changed less than, more than or
exactly 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) by the
current user. 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 less than, more than or exactly
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 -follow 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. The pattern `*foo*` will
also match a file called '.foobar'.
-inum n
File has inode number smaller than, greater than or exactly
n. It is normally easier to use the -samefile test
instead.
-ipath pattern
Like -path. but the match is case insensitive.
-iregex pattern
Like -regex, but the match is case insensitive.
-iwholename pattern
See -ipath. This alternative is less portable than -ipath.
-links n
File has less than, more than or exactly n hard 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 less than, more than or
exactly n minutes ago.
-mtime n
File's data was last modified less than, more than or
exactly 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. Because the
leading directories of the file names are removed, the
pattern should not include a slash, because `-name a/b'
will never match anything (and you probably want to use
-path instead). An exception to this is when using only a
slash as pattern (`-name /'), because that is a valid
string for matching the root directory "/" (because the
base name of "/" is "/"). A warning is issued if you try
to pass a pattern containing a - but not consisting solely
of one - slash, unless the environment variable
POSIXLY_CORRECT is set or the option -nowarn is used.
To ignore a directory and the files under it, use -prune
rather than checking every file in the tree; see an example
in the description of that action. 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 reference
Time of the last data modification of the current file is
more recent than that of the last data modification of the
reference file. If reference is a symbolic link and the -H
option or the -L option is in effect, then the time of the
last data modification of the file it points to is always
used.
-newerXY reference
Succeeds if timestamp X of the file being considered is
newer than timestamp Y of the file reference. The letters
X and Y can be any of the following letters:
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. 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
Find compares the -path argument with the concatenation of
a directory name and the base name of the file it's
examining. Since the concatenation will never end with a
slash, -path arguments ending in a slash will match nothing
(except perhaps a start point specified on the command
line). The predicate -path is also supported by HP-UX find
and is part of the POSIX 2008 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 permission 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 examples.
-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 you 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
permission 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
This is no longer supported (and has been deprecated since
2005). Use -perm /mode instead.
-readable
Matches files which are readable by the current user. 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 less than, more than or exactly n units of space,
rounding up. 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 kibibytes (KiB, units of 1024 bytes)
`M' for mebibytes (MiB, units of 1024 * 1024 = 1048576
bytes)
`G' for gibibytes (GiB, units of 1024 * 1024 * 1024 =
1073741824 bytes)
The size is simply the st_size member of the struct stat
populated by the lstat (or stat) system call, rounded up as
shown above. In other words, it's consistent with the
result you get for ls -l. 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 1024-byte blocks, which is different to the
behaviour of -ls.
The + and - prefixes signify greater than and less than, as
usual; i.e., an exact size of n units does not match. Bear
in mind that the size is rounded up to the next unit.
Therefore -size -1M is not equivalent to -size -1048576c.
The former only matches empty files, the latter matches
files from 0 to 1,048,575 bytes.
-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)
To search for more than one type at once, you can supply
the combined list of type letters separated by a comma `,'
(GNU extension).
-uid n File's numeric user ID is less than, more than or exactly
n.
-used n
File was last accessed less than, more than or exactly 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 by the current user. 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
symbolic links, -xtype checks the type of the file that
-type does not check. If a symbolic link is broken
(because the thing it points to does not exist or the link
points to itself) then -xtype will behave the same as
-type.
-context pattern
(SELinux only) Security context of the file matches glob
pattern.
ACTIONS
-delete
Delete files or directories; true if removal succeeded. If
the removal failed, an error message is issued and find's
exit status will be nonzero (when it eventually exits).
Warning: Don't forget that find evaluates the command line
as an expression, so putting -delete first will make find
try to delete everything below the starting points you
specified.
The use of the -delete action on the command line
automatically turns on the -depth option. As in turn
-depth makes -prune ineffective, the -delete action cannot
usefully be combined with -prune.
Often, the user might want to test a find command line with
-print prior to adding -delete for the actual removal run.
To avoid surprising results, it is usually best to remember
to use -depth explicitly during those earlier test runs.
The -delete action will fail to remove a directory unless
it is empty.
Together with the -ignore_readdir_race option, find will
ignore errors of the -delete action in the case the file
has disappeared since the parent directory was read: it
will not output an error diagnostic, not change the exit
code to nonzero, and the return code of the -delete action
will be true.
-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 processed everywhere it occurs in the
arguments to the command, not just in arguments where it is
alone, as in some versions of find. Both of these
constructions 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,
and it must appear at the end, immediately before the `+';
it needs to be escaped (with a `\') or quoted to protect it
from interpretation by the shell. The command is executed
in the starting directory. If any invocation with the `+'
form returns a non-zero value as exit status, then find
returns a non-zero exit status. If find encounters an
error, this can sometimes cause an immediate exit, so some
pending commands may not be run at all. For this reason
-exec my-command ... {} + -quit may not result in my-
command actually being run. This variant of -exec always
returns true.
-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. Each
selected file name except for the root directory "/" is
prepended with "./". As with -exec, the {} should be
quoted if find is being invoked from a shell. 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. If any invocation with
the `+' form returns a non-zero value as exit status, then
find returns a non-zero exit status. If find encounters an
error, this can sometimes cause an immediate exit, so some
pending commands may not be run at all. The result of the
action depends on whether the + or the ; variant is being
used; -execdir command {} + always returns true, while
-execdir command {} ; returns true only if command returns
0.
-fls file
True; like -ls 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.
-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
standard 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 1 KiB 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. Otherwise just return false. If the command
is run, its standard input is redirected from /dev/null.
This action may not be specified together with the
-files0-from option.
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 expression 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 environment 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. This action may not be specified together with
the -files0-from option.
-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 character (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(3) 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 character, so they both are printed.
%% A literal percent sign.
%a File's last access time in the format returned by
the C ctime(3) function.
%Ak File's last access time in the format specified by
k, which is either `@' or a directive for the C
strftime(3) function. The following shows an
incomplete list of possible values for k. Please
refer to the documentation of strftime(3) for the
full list. Some of the conversion specification
characters might not be available on all systems,
due to differences in the implementation of the
strftime(3) library function.
@ 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.xxxxxxxxxx)
+ 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). The
seconds field includes a fractional part.
Z time zone (e.g., EDT), or nothing if no time
zone is determinable
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 format 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)
F date (yyyy-mm-dd)
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.
%Bk File's birth time, i.e., its creation time, in the
format specified by k, which is the same as for %A.
This directive produces an empty string if the
underlying operating system or filesystem does not
support birth times.
%c File's last status change time in the format
returned by the C ctime(3) 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 starting-point.
%D The device number on which the file exists (the
st_dev field of struct stat), in decimal.
%f Print the basename; the file's name with any leading
directories removed (only the last element). For /,
the result is `/'. See the EXAMPLES section for an
example.
%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 Dirname; the Leading directories of the 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 `.'. For
files which are themselves directories and contain a
slash (including /), %h expands to the empty string.
See the EXAMPLES section for an example.
%H Starting-point under which file was found.
%i File's inode number (in decimal).
%k The amount of disk space used for this file in 1 KiB
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 # flag (as in, for example, `%#m').
%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 starting-point
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 certain
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. In general the number of
blocks used by a file is file system dependent. 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(3) 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 symbolic links:
`L'=loop, `N'=nonexistent, `?' for any other error
when determining the type of the target of a
symbolic link.
%Z (SELinux only) file's security context.
%{ %[ %(
Reserved for future use.
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 #, 0 and + flags, but
the other directives do not, even if they print numbers.
Numeric directives that do not support 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, then -prune has no effect. Because
-delete implies -depth, you cannot usefully use -prune and
-delete together. 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 something like this:
find . -path ./src/emacs -prune -o -print
-quit Exit immediately (with return value zero if no errors have
occurred). This is different to -prune because -prune only
applies to the contents of pruned directories, while -quit
simply makes find stop immediately. No child processes
will be left running. Any command lines which have been
built by -exec ... + or -execdir ... + are invoked before
the program is exited. After -quit is executed, no more
files specified on the command line will be processed. For
example, `find /tmp/foo /tmp/bar -print -quit` will print
only `/tmp/foo`.
One common use of -quit is to stop searching the file
system once we have found what we want. For example, if we
want to find just a single file we can do this:
find / -name needle -print -quit
OPERATORS
Listed in order of decreasing precedence:
( expr )
Force precedence. Since parentheses are special to the
shell, you will normally need to quote them. Many of the
examples in this manual page use backslashes 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 -a; 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 discarded; 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.
Please note that -a when specified implicitly (for example by two
tests appearing without an explicit operator between them) or
explicitly has higher precedence than -o. This means that find .
-name afile -o -name bfile -print will never print afile.
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 mechanism 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 terminator 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.
For closest compliance to the POSIX standard, you should set the
POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable. The following options are
specified in the POSIX standard (IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, 2016
Edition):
-H This option is supported.
-L This option is supported.
-name This option is supported, but POSIX conformance depends on
the POSIX conformance of the system's fnmatch(3) library
function. As of findutils-4.2.2, shell metacharacters
(`*', `?' or `[]' for example) 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. Furthermore, GNU find allows
multiple types to be specified at once in a comma-separated
list.
-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
system's definition of a positive (yes) or negative (no)
response. See the system'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 dereferenced. This is a change from previous
behaviour, which used to take the relevant 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 primaries
The primaries -atime, -ctime, -depth, -exec, -group,
-links, -mtime, -nogroup, -nouser, -ok, -path, -print,
-prune, -size, -user and -xdev are all supported.
The POSIX standard specifies parentheses `(', `)', negation `!'
and the logical AND/OR operators -a and -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 contain entries which are hard links to an
ancestor will often be lower than they otherwise should be. This
can mean that GNU find will sometimes optimize away the visiting
of a subdirectory which is actually a link to an ancestor. Since
find does not actually 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 actually
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 containing 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.
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 internationalization 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 interpretation 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 constructs 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.
Simple `find|xargs` approach
• Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and
delete them.
$ find /tmp -name core -type f -print | xargs /bin/rm -f
Note that this will work incorrectly if there are any
filenames containing newlines, single or double quotes, or
spaces.
Safer `find -print0 | xargs -0` approach
• Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and
delete them, processing filenames in such a way that file or
directory names containing single or double quotes, spaces or
newlines are correctly handled.
$ find /tmp -name core -type f -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -f
The -name test comes before the -type test in order to avoid
having to call stat(2) on every file.
Note that there is still a race between the time find traverses
the hierarchy printing the matching filenames, and the time the
process executed by xargs works with that file.
Processing arbitrary starting points
• Given that another program proggy pre-filters and creates a
huge NUL-separated list of files, process those as starting
points, and find all regular, empty files among them:
$ proggy | find -files0-from - -maxdepth 0 -type f -empty
The use of `-files0-from -` means to read the names of the
starting points from standard input, i.e., from the pipe; and
-maxdepth 0 ensures that only explicitly those entries are
examined without recursing into directories (in the case one
of the starting points is one).
Executing a command for each file
• Run file on every file in or below the current directory.
$ find . -type f -exec file '{}' \;
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.
In many cases, one might prefer the `-exec ... +` or better the
`-execdir ... +` syntax for performance and security reasons.
Traversing the filesystem just once – for 2 different actions
• Traverse the filesystem just once, listing set-user-ID files
and directories into /root/suid.txt and large files into
/root/big.txt.
$ find / \
\( -perm -4000 -fprintf /root/suid.txt '%#m %u %p\n' \) , \
\( -size +100M -fprintf /root/big.txt '%-10s %p\n' \)
This example uses the line-continuation character '\' on the
first two lines to instruct the shell to continue reading the
command on the next line.
Searching files by age
• Search for files in your home directory which have been
modified in the last twenty-four hours.
$ find $HOME -mtime 0
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.
Searching files by permissions
• Search for files which are executable but not readable.
$ find /sbin /usr/sbin -executable \! -readable -print
• Search for files which have read and write permission for
their owner, and group, but which other users can read but not
write to.
$ find . -perm 664
Files which meet these criteria but have other permissions
bits set (for example if someone can execute the file) will
not be matched.
• 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).
$ find . -perm -664
This will match a file which has mode 0777, for example.
• Search for files which are writable by somebody (their owner,
or their group, or anybody else).
$ find . -perm /222
• Search for files which are writable by either their owner or
their group.
$ 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 representation of the file mode, and the
other two use the symbolic form. The files don't have to be
writable by both the owner and group to be matched; either
will do.
• Search for files which are writable by both their owner and
their group.
$ find . -perm -220
$ find . -perm -g+w,u+w
Both these commands do the same thing.
• A more elaborate search on permissions.
$ 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 or ! -perm /a+x respectively).
Pruning – omitting files and subdirectories
• Copy the contents of /source-dir to /dest-dir, but omit files
and directories named .snapshot (and anything in them). It
also omits files or directories whose name ends in `~', but
not their contents.
$ cd /source-dir
$ find . -name .snapshot -prune -o \( \! -name '*~' -print0 \) \
| cpio -pmd0 /dest-dir
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.
• Given the following directory of projects and their associated
SCM administrative directories, perform an efficient search
for the projects' roots:
$ find repo/ \
\( -exec test -d '{}/.svn' \; \
-or -exec test -d '{}/.git' \; \
-or -exec test -d '{}/CVS' \; \
\) -print -prune
Sample directories:
repo/project1/CVS
repo/gnu/project2/.svn
repo/gnu/project3/.svn
repo/gnu/project3/src/.svn
repo/project4/.git
Output:
repo/project1
repo/gnu/project2
repo/gnu/project3
repo/project4
In this example, -prune prevents unnecessary descent into
directories that have already been discovered (here we do not
search project3/src because we already found project3/.svn),
but ensures sibling directories (project2 and project3) are
found.
Other useful examples
• Search for several file types.
$ find /tmp -type f,d,l
Search for files, directories, and symbolic links in the
directory /tmp passing these types as a comma-separated list
(GNU extension), which is otherwise equivalent to the longer,
yet more portable:
$ find /tmp \( -type f -o -type d -o -type l \)
• Search for files with the particular name needle and stop
immediately when we find the first one.
$ find / -name needle -print -quit
• Demonstrate the interpretation of the %f and %h format
directives of the -printf action for some corner-cases. Here
is an example including some output.
$ find . .. / /tmp /tmp/TRACE compile compile/64/tests/find \
-maxdepth 0 -printf '[%h][%f]\n'
[.][.]
[.][..]
[][/]
[][tmp]
[/tmp][TRACE]
[.][compile]
[compile/64/tests][find]
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.
When some error occurs, find may stop immediately, without
completing all the actions specified. For example, some starting
points may not have been examined or some pending program
invocations for -exec ... {} + or -execdir ... {} + may not have
been performed.
A find program appeared in Version 5 Unix as part of the
Programmer's Workbench project and was written by Dick Haight.
Doug McIlroy's A Research UNIX Reader: Annotated Excerpts from the
Programmer’s Manual, 1971–1986 provides some additional details;
you can read it on-line at
<https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf>.
GNU find was originally written by Eric Decker, with enhancements
by David MacKenzie, Jay Plett, and Tim Wood. The idea for find
-print0 and xargs -0 came from Dan Bernstein.
As of findutils-4.2.2, shell metacharacters (`*', `?' or `[]' for
example) used in filename patterns match a leading `.', because
IEEE POSIX interpretation 126 requires this.
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 status was unaffected by the
failure of -delete.
Feature Added in Also occurs in
-files0-from 4.9.0
-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
-print0 2.0 POSIX (from Issue 8)
The syntax -perm +MODE was removed in findutils-4.5.12, in favour
of -perm /MODE. The +MODE syntax had been deprecated since
findutils-4.2.21 which was released in 2005.
Operator precedence surprises
The command find . -name afile -o -name bfile -print will never
print afile because this is actually equivalent to find . -name
afile -o \( -name bfile -a -print \). Remember that the
precedence of -a is higher than that of -o and when there is no
operator specified between tests, -a is assumed.
“paths must precede expression” error message
$ find . -name *.c -print
find: paths must precede expression
find: possible unquoted pattern after predicate `-name'?
This happens when the shell could expand the pattern *.c to more
than one file name existing in the current directory, and passing
the resulting file names in the command line to find like this:
find . -name frcode.c locate.c word_io.c -print
That command is of course not going to work, because the -name
predicate allows exactly only one pattern as argument. Instead of
doing things this way, you should enclose the pattern in quotes or
escape the wildcard, thus allowing find to use the pattern with
the wildcard during the search for file name matching instead of
file names expanded by the parent shell:
$ find . -name '*.c' -print
$ find . -name \*.c -print
There are security problems inherent in the behaviour that the
POSIX standard specifies for find, which therefore cannot be
fixed. For example, the -exec action is inherently insecure, and
-execdir should be used instead.
The environment variable LC_COLLATE has no effect on the -ok
action.
GNU findutils online help:
<https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/#get-help>
Report any translation bugs to
<https://translationproject.org/team/>
Report any other issue via the form at the GNU Savannah bug
tracker:
<https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils>
General topics about the GNU findutils package are discussed at
the bug-findutils mailing list:
<https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-findutils>
Copyright © 1990–2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License
GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
<https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
chmod(1), locate(1), ls(1), updatedb(1), xargs(1), lstat(2),
stat(2), ctime(3) fnmatch(3), printf(3), strftime(3), locatedb(5),
regex(7)
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/find>
or available locally via: info find
This page is part of the findutils (find utilities) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils⟩. This page was
obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.savannah.gnu.org/findutils.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2025-07-09.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
FIND(1)
Pages that refer to this page: dpkg(1), dpkg-name(1), find-filter(1), grep(1), ippfind(1), locate(1), mkaf(1), pmlogger_daily(1), tar(1), updatedb(1), xargs(1), fts(3), proc(5), proc_pid_exe(5), hier(7), symlink(7)
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