Find

Find

Syntax

# find   location  test  options   criteria_to_match   action_to_perform

Finding files

To find all files having txt extension *.txt

# find / -name *.txt

To find file location

# find / -name syslog.conf

Files owned by a user

# find / -user root

Files by type

# find / -type d

l—symbolic link

d—directory

b—block (buffered) special
c—character (unbuffered) special
p—named pipe (FIFO)
s—socket

File according to date and time

# find / -atime +3

-atime +3: All files that were last accessed more than 3 days ago

mtime—the time that the contents of a file were last modified 

atime—the time that a file was read or accessed

ctime—the time that a file’s status was changed

-n returns less than n 

+n returns greater than n 

n, by itself,returns exactly n matches

Files by size(larger than 5 MB)

# find / -size +5000000c

Finding by Permission and Ownership

# find / -type f  -perm a=rwx 

or 

# find / -type f  -perm 777

Finding files and perform some action (delete)

# find . -type f -perm 777 -exec ls -l *.* {} \;

Locate command

To find the location of files & directories

# locate *.txt

To update the database

# updatedb