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find

Check Wooledge’s site - always. There are some unsafe ways to use find; you'll want to avoid them. Here's a good example of something with potentially catastrophic consequences:

Search and Replace on bulk files; I still use this one regularly:

find . -type f -exec grep 'strX' -l {} \; -exec sed -i 's/strX/strY/g' {} \;

But, by being careful, I once turned a 3-month job into a 15-minute job with this command. They hired me for the remaining 3-months by the way.

Using multiple name expressions, an example.

Search for multiple strings

find . -type f -exec grep -E '(strX|strY)' {} +

This one is good for validations, like: did the first command actually change strX -> strY?

Changing permissions en masse

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find . -uid 1000 -exec chown 1010:1010 {} \;

Given this set of conditions:

% find /tmp/ -name '.DS_Store' 
/tmp/.DS_Store
/tmp/istio/.DS_Store
/tmp/istio/pilot/.DS_Store
/tmp/istio/pilot/pkg/.DS_Store
/tmp/istio/pilot/pkg/xds/testdata/.DS_Store
/tmp/istio/pilot/pkg/xds/.DS_Store

We can find and remove these files in bulk

% find /tmp/ -name '.DS_Store' -exec rm {} +

Find files by size

% find ~/Downloads -type f -size +1024k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $5 ": " $9 }' 
2.3M: /Users/thomas/Downloads/00-business-plan-sol-burger.docx
25M: /Users/thomas/Downloads/Toontrack_Product_Manager_MAC
9.2M: /Users/thomas/Downloads/vimsimple-works.tgz
3.4G: /Users/thomas/Downloads/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac.pkg
206M: /Users/thomas/Downloads/plugins/Install_Waves_Central.dmg
198M: /Users/thomas/Downloads/plugins/UA_Connect_1_2_2_1327_Mac.dmg
3.6G: /Users/thomas/Downloads/music-production/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac.zip
363M: /Users/thomas/Downloads/music-production/neuraldsp/Darkglass
7.8M: /Users/thomas/Downloads/solarized/img/solarized
...

Find any file over 1MB; output: file size and path

find "$HOME" -type f -size +1024k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $5 ": " $9 }'
...
1.8M: /Users/$USER/Pictures/Photos

Find any files >500MB

% find ~/Downloads -type f -size +500000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $5 ": " $9 }'
3.4G: /Users/thomas/Downloads/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac.pkg
3.6G: /Users/thomas/Downloads/music-production/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac.zip

Find file exactly n bytes:

% find ~/Downloads -type f -size 22073c -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $5 ": " $9 }'
22K: /Users/thomas/Downloads/solarized/img/andalemono14/screen-javascript-light.png

Find files by date/time with sorting

find ~/code -type f -name actuate.tf -exec stat -c '%y %n' {} + | awk '{ print $1 " @ " $2 " " $4}' | sort -r
2022-09-29 @ 17:40:17.593810169 /Users/thomas/Downloads/pos-requirements.pdf
2022-09-26 @ 18:30:33.776752815 /Users/thomas/Downloads/TheTerraformBook.pdf
2022-09-26 @ 18:30:25.742799705 /Users/thomas/Downloads/ThePackerBook.pdf
2022-09-26 @ 18:13:05.541643351 /Users/thomas/Downloads/Todd_prescriptionSchedule.pdf
2022-09-25 @ 19:36:07.811683018 /Users/thomas/Downloads/bug-report.tar.gz
...
2022-05-17 @ 09:04:00.000000000 /Users/thomas/Downloads/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac/.DS_Store
2022-05-17 @ 08:52:57.000000000 /Users/thomas/Downloads/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac.pkg
2022-05-16 @ 09:31:30.000000000 /Users/thomas/Downloads/UAD-v10.1.0-Mac/UA
2019-12-11 @ 05:20:24.000000000 /Users/thomas/Downloads/music-production/neuraldsp/Darkglass
2019-11-29 @ 06:10:08.000000000 /Users/thomas/Downloads/music-production/neuraldsp/Darkglass
...

Find files created/modified within the last 10 minutes:

% sudo find /var/log -cmin -5
/var/log/powermanagement/StoreData
/var/log/powermanagement/2022.09.30.asl
...
/var/log/system.log

Within the last 60 days:

% sudo find /etc/ -iname "*.txt" -mtime -60 -print
/etc/hosts

This one searches:

  • any FILE, skip directories
  • file > 50MB but < 500MB
  • date of file: measure -mtime (last 24hrs) from the beginning of today
% find "$HOME" -type f -size +50M -size -500M -mtime 1 -daystart -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $5 ": " $9 }' 
86M: /Users/thomas/Library/Application

Find files by Content

For a majority of searches this works great

% sudo find /dir/path/ -type f -exec grep 'string' {} +

Or, add line numbers by passing the -n argument to grep

$ sudo find /etc/ -type f -name 'shells' -exec grep -Hn bash {} +
/etc/shells:2:/bin/bash
/etc/shells:4:/usr/bin/bash

Find any links to reference file ('/tmp/yo') and grep found files for a string

% ln -s /tmp/yo yo

% cat yo                                               
a1 b1 c1
a2 b2 c2
a3 b3 c3

find -L . -type f -samefile /tmp/yo
./yo

find -L . -type f -samefile /tmp/yo -print0 | xargs -0 grep -FzZ 'b2'
  • -F, Interpret PATTERN as a list of fixed strings, separated by newlines, any of which is to be matched.
  • -Z, Output a zero byte (the ASCII NUL character) instead of the character that normally follows a file name.
  • -z, Treat the input as a set of lines, each terminated by a zero byte (the ASCII NUL character) instead of a newline.

Being Selective

Don't descend past the root directory, in this case: /etc/

$ sudo find /etc/ -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec grep -i 'localhost' {} +

Pruning

Search the whole filesystem except...

$ sudo find / -name "proc" -prune , -name "dev" -prune , -name "udev" -prune , -name "sys" -prune , -perm -0002

Save all output to a file:

sudo find / -name "proc" -prune , -name "run" -prune -o -perm -0002 -type f \( -fprintf /tmp/find-out.log '%#M  %u  %g  %p\n' \)

Create a list of dates associated with file names:

find ~/code/ -type f -name '*.sh' \( -fprintf /tmp/find-out.log '%AY%Am%Ad %p\n' \)

The list can later be sorted by date to find the latest files touched.

List Contents of All found Zip files

find ~/Downloads -type f -name '*.zip' -exec zipinfo -m {} \;

Changing permissions en masse

Set the required permissions on types of filesystem objects

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find . -uid 1000 -exec chown 1010:1010 {} \;