Find Command Notes and Examples

                                  
find <location> <criteria> <action>

criteria:

-atime n         accessed n days ago
-mtime n         modified n days ago
-size n[c]       n blocks (a block is 512 bytes) if followed by 'c', the number
                 is in bytes
-type type          file type: f=plain text, d=directory, etc...
-fstype type     file system type: ufs, nfs, etc...
-name name       name of file
-user user       owner of file
-group group     group of file
-o               or

-mtime +10       modified more than 10 days ago
-atime -5        accessed less than five days ago
-size +100       larger than 100 blocks (50KB)

!                negates criteria (! -name "test" matches files NOT named "test")


action:

-print              print pathnames of matching files
-exec command       execute command "command" on matched file
-ok command         prompt before executing the command "command" on matched file
-prune              don't descend into subdirectories


*executed commands must end with  \; 

see Reqular Expressions Reference for info on regular expressions

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examples
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Search for file with a specific name in a set of files (-name)

find . -name test.file

searches in the current working directory for a file named "test.file"

find /etc -name test.conf

searches in /etc for a file named "test.conf"

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Search for a file and if found, execute a command

find /etc -name test.conf -exec chmod 775 {} \;

searches in /etc for a file named "test.conf" and if found, executes
'chmod 755' on that file 

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Search for a string in files that match criteria

find . -name \*.log -exec grep "error" {} \;

searches in the current working directory for all files ending in ".log" and
then executes grep on those files to find the string "error"

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search multiple directories 

find /etc /usr -name \*.log 

searches /etc/ and /usr for any files ending in ".log"

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search for files older than a certain time and remove

find . -name \*.log -mtime +10 -exec rm {} \;

searches in the current working directory for all files ending in ".log" and
last modified over 10 days ago and removes those files

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Search for files that have not been accessed in a certain time and remove
(with prompting)

find /apps -atime +30 -ok rm {} \;

searches in the /apps directory for all files that have not been accessed in
over 10 days and prompts the user before removing those files

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search for files by access and modify time, and long list them
 
find /apps \(-mtime +10 -o -atime +20\) -exec ls -l {} \;

searches in the /apps directory for all files that have not been accessed in
over 20 days or not modified in over 10 days and long lists those files

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remove core files larger than a certain size

find /apps -type f -size +104857600c -name core -exec rm {} \;

searches in the /apps directory for files (-type f) named "core" that are
larger than 100mb (104857600 bytes = 100mb) and removes them

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