find(1) User Commands find(1)NAMEfind - find files
SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/find [-H | -L] path... expression
/usr/xpg4/bin/find [-H | -L] path... expression
DESCRIPTION
The find utility recursively descends the directory hierarchy for each
path seeking files that match a Boolean expression written in the pri‐
maries specified below.
find is able to descend to arbitrary depths in a file hierarchy and
does not fail due to path length limitations (unless a path operand
specified by the application exceeds PATH_MAX requirements).
find detects infinite loops; that is, entering a previously visited
directory that is an ancestor of the last file encountered.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-H Causes the file information and file type evaluated for each sym‐
bolic link encountered on the command line to be those of the
file referenced by the link, and not the link itself. If the ref‐
erenced file does not exist, the file information and type is for
the link itself. File information for all symbolic links not on
the command line is that of the link itself.
-L Causes the file information and file type evaluated for each sym‐
bolic link to be those of the file referenced by the link, and
not the link itself. See NOTES.
Specifying more than one of the mutually-exclusive options -H and -Lis
not considered an error. The last option specified determines the
behavior of the utility.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
path A pathname of a starting point in the directory hierar‐
chy.
expression The first argument that starts with a −, or is a ! or a
(, and all subsequent arguments are interpreted as an
expression made up of the following primaries and opera‐
tors. In the descriptions, wherever n is used as a pri‐
mary argument, it is interpreted as a decimal integer
optionally preceded by a plus (+) or minus (−) sign, as
follows:
+n more than n
n exactly n
-n less than n
Expressions
Valid expressions are:
-acl True if the file have additional ACLs defined.
-amin n File was last accessed n minutes ago.
-atime n True if the file was accessed n days ago. The access
time of directories in path is changed by find itself.
-cmin n File's status was last changed n minutes ago.
-cpio device Always true. Writes the current file on device in cpio
format (5120-byte records).
-ctime n True if the file's status was changed n days ago.
-depth Always true. Causes descent of the directory hierarchy
to be done so that all entries in a directory are
acted on before the directory itself. This can be use‐
ful when find is used with cpio(1) to transfer files
that are contained in directories without write per‐
mission.
-exec command True if the executed command returns a zero value as
exit status. The end of command must be punctuated by
an escaped semicolon (;). A command argument {} is
replaced by the current pathname. If the last argument
to -exec is {} and you specify + rather than the semi‐
colon (;), the command is invoked fewer times, with {}
replaced by groups of pathnames. If any invocation of
the command returns a non-zero value as exit status,
find returns a non-zero exit status.
-follow Always true and always evaluated no matter where it
appears in expression. The behavior is unspecified if
-follow is used when the find command is invoked with
either the -H or the -L option. Causes symbolic links
to be followed. When following symbolic links, find
keeps track of the directories visited so that it can
detect infinite loops. For example, such a loop would
occur if a symbolic link pointed to an ancestor. This
expression should not be used with the find-type l
expression. See NOTES.
-fstype type True if the filesystem to which the file belongs is of
type type.
-group gname True if the file belongs to the group gname. If gname
is numeric and does not appear in the /etc/group file,
or in the NIS tables, it is taken as a group ID.
-inum n True if the file has inode number n.
-links n True if the file has n links.
-local True if the file system type is not a remote file sys‐
tem type as defined in the /etc/dfs/fstypes file. nfs
is used as the default remote filesystem type if the
/etc/dfs/fstypes file is not present. The -local
option descends the hierarchy of non-local directo‐
ries. See EXAMPLES for an example of how to search for
local files without descending.
-ls Always true. Prints current pathname together with its
associated statistics. These include (respectively):
o inode number
o size in kilobytes (1024 bytes)
o protection mode
o number of hard links
o user
o group
o size in bytes
o modification time.
If the file is a special file, the size field instead
contains the major and minor device numbers.
If the file is a symbolic link, the pathname of the
linked-to file is printed preceded by `→'. The format
is identical to that of ls -gilds (see ls(1B)).
Formatting is done internally, without executing the
ls program.
-mmin n File's data was last modified n minutes ago.
-mount Always true. Restricts the search to the file system
containing the directory specified. Does not list
mount points to other file systems.
-mtime n True if the file's data was modified n days ago.
-name pattern True if pattern matches the basename of the current
file name. Normal shell file name generation charac‐
ters (see sh(1)) can be used. A backslash (\) is used
as an escape character within the pattern. The pattern
should be escaped or quoted when find is invoked from
the shell.
Unless the character '.' is explicitly specified in
the beginning of pattern, a current file name begin‐
ning with '.' does not match pattern when using
/usr/bin/find. /usr/xpg4/bin/find does not make this
distinction; wildcard file name generation characters
can match file names beginning with '.'.
-ncpio device Always true. Writes the current file on device in cpio
-c format (5120 byte records).
-newer file True if the current file has been modified more
recently than the argument file.
-nogroup True if the file belongs to a group not in the
/etc/group file, or in the NIS tables.
-nouser True if the file belongs to a user not in the
/etc/passwd file, or in the NIS tables.
-ok command Like -exec, except that the generated command line is
printed with a question mark first, and is executed
only if the response is affirmative.
-perm [-]mode The mode argument is used to represent file mode bits.
It is identical in format to the symbolic mode oper‐
and, symbolic_mode_list, described in chmod(1), and is
interpreted as follows. To start, a template is
assumed with all file mode bits cleared. An op symbol
of:
+ Set the appropriate mode bits in the template
− Clear the appropriate bits
= Set the appropriate mode bits, without regard
to the contents of the file mode creation mask
of the process
The op symbol of − cannot be the first character of
mode, to avoid ambiguity with the optional leading
hyphen. Since the initial mode is all bits off, there
are no symbolic modes that need to use − as the first
character.
If the hyphen is omitted, the primary evaluates as
true when the file permission bits exactly match the
value of the resulting template.
Otherwise, if mode is prefixed by a hyphen, the pri‐
mary evaluates as true if at least all the bits in the
resulting template are set in the file permission
bits.
-perm [-]onum True if the file permission flags exactly match the
octal number onum (see chmod(1)). If onum is prefixed
by a minus sign (−), only the bits that are set in
onum are compared with the file permission flags, and
the expression evaluates true if they match.
-print Always true. Causes the current pathname to be
printed.
-prune Always yields true. Does not examine any directories
or files in the directory structure below the pattern
just matched. (See EXAMPLES). If -depth is specified,
-prune has no effect.
-size n[c] True if the file is n blocks long (512 bytes per
block). If n is followed by a c, the size is in bytes.
-type c True if the type of the file is c, where c is b, c, d,
D, f, l, p, or s for block special file, character
special file, directory, door, plain file, symbolic
link, fifo (named pipe), or socket, respectively.
-user uname True if the file belongs to the user uname. If uname
is numeric and does not appear as a login name in the
/etc/passwd file, or in the NIS tables, it is taken as
a user ID.
-xdev Same as the -mount primary.
-xattr True if the file has extended attributes.
Complex Expressions
The primaries can be combined using the following operators (in order
of decreasing precedence):
1)(expression)
True if the parenthesized expression is true (parentheses are spe‐
cial to the shell and must be escaped).
2)!expression
The negation of a primary (! is the unary not operator).
3) expression[-a] expression
Concatenation of primaries (the and operation is implied by the
juxtaposition of two primaries).
4) expression-oexpression
Alternation of primaries (-o is the or operator).
When you use find in conjunction with cpio, if you use the -L option
with cpio, you must use the -L option or the -follow primitive with
find and vice versa. Otherwise the results are unspecified.
If no expression is present, -print is used as the expression. Other‐
wise, if the specified expression does not contain any of the primaries
-exec, -ok, -ls, or -print, the specified expression is effectively
replaced by:
(specified) -print
The -user, -group, and -newer primaries each evaluate their respective
arguments only once. Invocation of command specified by -exec or -ok
does not affect subsequent primaries on the same file.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of find when
encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte (2^31 bytes).
EXAMPLES
Example 1 Writing Out the Hierarchy Directory
The following commands are equivalent:
example% find .
example% find . -print
They both write out the entire directory hierarchy from the current
directory.
Example 2 Removing Files
The following comand removes all files in your home directory named
a.out or *.o that have not been accessed for a week:
example% find $HOME \( -name a.out -o -name '*.o' \) \
-atime +7 -exec rm {} \;
Example 3 Printing All File Names But Skipping SCCS Directories
The following command recursively print all file names in the current
directory and below, but skipping SCCS directories:
example% find . -name SCCS -prune -o -print
Example 4 Printing all file names and the SCCS directory name
Recursively print all file names in the current directory and below,
skipping the contents of SCCS directories, but printing out the SCCS
directory name:
example% find . -print -name SCCS -prune
Example 5 Testing for the Newer File
The following command is basically equivalent to the -nt extension to
test(1):
example$ if [ -n "$(find
file1 -prune -newer file2)" ]; then
printf %s\\n "file1 is newer than file2"
Example 6 Selecting a File Using 24-hour Mode
The descriptions of -atime, -ctime, and -mtime use the terminology n
``24-hour periods''. For example, a file accessed at 23:59 is selected
by:
example% find . -atime -1 -print
at 00:01 the next day (less than 24 hours later, not more than one day
ago). The midnight boundary between days has no effect on the 24-hour
calculation.
Example 7 Printing Files Matching a User's Permission Mode
The following command recursively print all file names whose permission
mode exactly matches read, write, and execute access for user, and read
and execute access for group and other:
example% find . -perm u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx
The above could alternatively be specified as follows:
example% find . -perm a=rwx,g-w,o-w
Example 8 Printing Files with Write Access for other
The following command recursively print all file names whose permission
includes, but is not limited to, write access for other:
example% find . -perm -o+w
Example 9 Printing Local Files without Descending Non-local Directories
example% find . ! -local -prune -o -print
Example 10 Printing the Files in the Name Space Possessing Extended
Attributes
example% find . -xattr
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
that affect the execution of find: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.
PATH Determine the location of the utility_name for the -exec and
-ok primaries.
Affirmative responses are processed using the extended regular expres‐
sion defined for the yesexpr keyword in the LC_MESSAGES category of the
user's locale. The locale specified in the LC_COLLATE category defines
the behavior of ranges, equivalence classes, and multi-character col‐
lating elements used in the expression defined for yesexpr. The locale
specified in LC_CTYPE determines the locale for interpretation of
sequences of bytes of text data a characters, the behavior of character
classes used in the expression defined for the yesexpr. See locale(5).
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 All path operands were traversed successfully.
>0 An error occurred.
FILES
/etc/passwd Password file
/etc/group Group file
/etc/dfs/fstypes File that registers distributed file system pack‐
ages
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWcs │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│CSI │Enabled │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │Committed │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Standard │See standards(5). │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOchmod(1), cpio(1), sh(1), test(1), ls(1B), acl(2), stat(2), umask(2),
attributes(5), environ(5), fsattr(5), largefile(5), locale(5), stan‐
dards(5)WARNINGS
The following options are obsolete and will not be supported in future
releases:
-cpio device Always true. Writes the current file on device in cpio
format (5120-byte records).
-ncpio device Always true. Writes the current file on device in cpio
-c format (5120-byte records).
NOTES
When using find to determine files modified within a range of time, use
the -mtime argument before the -print argument. Otherwise, find gives
all files.
Some files that might be under the Solaris root file system are actu‐
ally mount points for virtual file systems, such as mntfs or namefs.
When comparing against a ufs file system, such files are not selected
if -mount or -xdev is specified in the find expression.
Using the -L or -follow option is not recommended when descending a
file-system hierarchy that is under the control of other users. In par‐
ticular, when using -exec, symbolic links can lead the find command out
of the hierarchy in which it started. Using -type is not sufficient to
restrict the type of files on which the -exec command operates, because
there is an inherent race condition between the type-check performed by
the find command and the time the executed command operates on the file
argument.
SunOS 5.11 10 Dec 2009 find(1)
