Manual: find
FIND(1) General Commands Manual FIND(1)
NAME
find - search for files in a directory hierarchy
SYNOPSIS
find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-D debugopts] [-Olevel] [starting-point...] [expression]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the GNU version of find. GNU find searches the directory tree rooted at each given start‐
ing-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 direc‐
tories that are writable by other users), you should read the `Security Considerations' chapter of the findutils doc‐
umentation, 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 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 argu‐
ments: it does that by reading until an expression argument comes (which also starts with a `-'). Now, if a path ar‐
gument 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 sym‐
bolic 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 bro‐
ken 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 dis‐
covers 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 guaran‐
teed 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 over‐
all 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 re‐
turned 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 mod‐
ified 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 ear‐
lier, 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 prob‐
ability 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 im‐
prove 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.
EXPRESSION
The part of the command line after the list of starting points is the expression. This is a kind of query specifica‐
tion 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 expres‐
sions 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, -ok, -okdir,
-fls, -fprint, -fprintf, -ls, -print and -printf.
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 af‐
fects only those tests which appear after it on the command line. Unless the -H or -L option has been speci‐
fied, 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 pred‐
icates 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 stan‐
dard input is a tty, and to -nowarn otherwise. If a warning message relating to command-line usage is pro‐
duced, 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 lim‐
itations 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 stan‐
dard 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 fol‐
lowed 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 immedi‐
ately after parsing the program arguments. This is unlike the standard invocation where find assumes the cur‐
rent 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 un‐
less 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. Fi‐
nally, 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
Time of the last access of the current file is more recent than that of the last data modification of the ref‐
erence 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
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 re‐
sult 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 sym‐
bolic 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 "/" (be‐
cause 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 imple‐
mented on all systems; for example B is not supported on all systems. If an invalid or unsupported combina‐
tion 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 be‐
ing 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 exam‐
ple,
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 sym‐
bolic 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 speci‐
fied, 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 re‐
moval 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 start‐
ing 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. As with -exec, the {} should be quoted if find is being in‐
voked 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 vari‐
able does not reference `.'; otherwise, an attacker can run any commands they like by leaving an appropri‐
ately-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 -ex‐
ecdir 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 KB 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 affirma‐
tive or negative response. This regular expression is obtained from the system if the POSIXLY_CORRECT envi‐
ronment variable is set, or otherwise from find's message translations. If the system has no suitable defini‐
tion, 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 speci‐
fied 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 pre‐
cisions 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) li‐
brary 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 mul‐
tiples 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 sup‐
port 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 con‐
tains 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 KB 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 imple‐
mentations 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. Nor‐
mally 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 un‐
defined 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-justi‐
fied.
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. Be‐
cause -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 -ex‐
ecdir ... + 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 be‐
tween them) or explicitly has higher precedence than -o. This means that find . -name afile -o -name bfile -print
will never print afile.
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 direc‐
tive 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.
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
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 findu‐
tils.
-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 previ‐
ous 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 ex‐
tensions 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 an‐
cestor 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 opti‐
mize 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 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 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 interpreta‐
tion 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 re‐
quires 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.
EXAMPLES
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 directo‐
ries (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 ef‐
ficient search for the projects' roots:
$ find repo/ \
\( -exec test -d '{}/.svn' \; \
-or -exec test -d '{}/.git' \; \
-or -exec test -d '{}/CVS' \; \
\) -print -prune
Sample output:
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.
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-sepa‐
rated 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]
EXIT STATUS
find exits with status 0 if all files are processed successfully, greater than 0 if errors occur. This is deliber‐
ately 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 -ex‐
ecdir ... {} + may not have been performed.
HISTORY
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 .
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.
COMPATIBILITY
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
The syntax -perm +MODE was removed in findutils-4.5.12, in favour of -perm /MODE. The +MODE syntax had been depre‐
cated since findutils-4.2.21 which was released in 2005.
NON-BUGS
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 direc‐
tory, 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
BUGS
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.
REPORTING BUGS
GNU findutils online help:
Report any translation bugs to
Report any other issue via the form at the GNU Savannah bug tracker:
General topics about the GNU findutils package are discussed at the bug-findutils mailing list:
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 1990–2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later .
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
law.
SEE ALSO
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
or available locally via: info find
FIND(1)