find(1) -- SunOS 5.7 -- Last change: 23 Jan 1998
NAME
find - find files
SYNOPSIS
find path ... expression
DESCRIPTION
The find utility recursively descends the directory hierar-
chy for each path seeking files that match a Boolean expres-
sion written in the primaries given below.
find will be able to descend to arbitrary depths in a file
hierarchy and will not fail due to path length limitations
(unless a path operand specified by the application exceeds
PATH_MAX requirements).
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
path A path name of a starting point in the directory
hierarchy.
expression
The first argument that starts with a -, or is a !
or a (, and all subsequent arguments will be
interpreted as an expression made up of the fol-
lowing primaries and operators. In the descrip-
tions, wherever n is used as a primary argument,
it will be 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:
-atime n True if the file was accessed n days ago. The
access time of directories in path is changed by
find itself.
-cpio device
Always true; write 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 useful when find is used with
cpio(1) to transfer files that are contained in
directories without write permission.
-exec command
True if the executed command returns a zero value
as exit status. The end of command must be punc-
tuated by an escaped semicolon. A command argu-
ment {} is replaced by the current path name.
-follow Always true; 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 -type
l expression.
-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, 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
system type as defined in the /etc/dfs/fstypes
file. nfsis used as the default remote filesystem
type if the/etc/dfs/fstypes file is not present.
-ls Always true; prints current path name together
with its associated statistics. These include
(respectively):
+ inode number
+ size in kilobytes (1024 bytes)
+ protection mode
+ number of hard links
+ user
+ group
+ size in bytes
+ modification time.
If the file is a special file the size field will
instead contain 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(1)). Note: Formatting is done internally,
without executing the ls program.
-mount Always true; restricts the search to the file sys-
tem 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 current file name.
Normal shell file name generation characters (see
sh(1)) may 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.
-ncpio device
Always true; write 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.
-nouser True if the file belongs to a user not in the
/etc/passwd file.
-ok command
Like -exec except that the generated command line
is printed with a question mark first, and is exe-
cuted only if the user responds by typing y.
-perm [-]mode
The mode argument is used to represent file mode
bits. It will be identical in format to the
operand described in chmod(1), and
will be interpreted as follows. To start, a tem-
plate will be assumed with all file mode bits
cleared. An op symbol of:
+ will set the appropriate mode bits in
the template;
- will clear the appropriate bits;
= will set the appropriate mode bits,
without regard to the contents of pro-
cess' file mode creation mask.
The op symbol of - cannot be the first character
of mode; this avoids ambiguity with the optional
leading hyphen. Since the initial mode is all bits
off, there are not any symbolic modes that need to
use - as the first character.
If the hyphen is omitted, the primary will evalu-
ate as true when the file permission bits exactly
match the value of the resulting template.
Otherwise, if mode is prefixed by a hyphen, the
primary will evaluate 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 permis-
sion flags, and the expression evaluates true if
they match.
-print Always true; causes the current path name to be
printed.
-prune Always yields true. Do not examine any directories
or files in the directory structure below the pat-
tern just matched. (See EXAMPLES). If -depth is
specified, -prune will have 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, it is taken as a
user ID.
-xdev Same as the -mount primary.
Complex Expressions
The primaries may be combined using the following operators
(in order of decreasing precedence):
1) ( expression )
True if the parenthesized expression is true
(parentheses are special 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 -o expression
Alternation of primaries (-o is the or operator).
Note: When you use find in conjunction with cpio , if you
use the -L option with cpio then you must use the -follow
expression with find and vice versa. Otherwise there will
be undesirable results.
If no expression is present, -print will be used as the
expression. Otherwise, if the given expression does not con-
tain any of the primaries -exec, -ok or -print, the given
expression will be effectively replaced by:
( given_expression ) -print
The -user, -group, and -newer primaries each will evaluate
their respective arguments only once.
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
Remove 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 direc-
tories
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 ter-
minology n ``24-hour periods''. For example, a file accessed
at 23:59 will be 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
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
Recursively print all file names whose permission includes,
but is not limited to, write access for other:
example% find . -perm -o+w
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
variables that affect the execution of find : LC_COLLATE,
LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.
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 attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWcsu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
chmod(1), cpio(1), ls(1), sh(1), test(1), stat(2), umask(2),
attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5)
WARNINGS
The following options are obsolete and will not be supported
in future releases:
-cpio device
Always true; write the current file on device in
cpio format (5120-byte records).
-ncpio device
Always true; write 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, one must use the ?time argument before the -print
argument; otherwise, find will give all files.