Find

Find things in a directory tree

find <directory> -type f -name '<spec>'

Find file in and below <directory> that match <spec>. Type f is for files, d for directory's, no type finds all.

find <directory> -xdev -name <spec>'

Limit the search to the current file-system, to not go into mounted filesystems.

find <directory> -type f -name '<spec>' -execdir <command> {} \;

For each file found execute <command> in the directory containing the file. {} represents the found file. NOTE!! Do not forget the \; at the end.

-exec works too but is less secure as mistakes main lead to execution in an unexpected place.

find <directory> -type f -name '<spec>' -mtime 1

Find files modified 1 day ago (between 24 and 48 hours).

Negative numbers find all files modified max 1 day ago.

Positive numbers (explicitly signed with +) find all files at modified at least 1 day ago.

-mmin counts minutes instead of days.

find <directory> -type f -name '<spec>' -printf '%T@ %p\n'

Print the files modification times in epoch (seconds since Jan 1, 1970) and the filename. Can be used e.g. to find the last files modified (with sort -n and tail)

find <dir> -printf '%s %p\n'| sort -nr | head -10

Find the top 10 largest files under a directory

find <dir> -type f -mtime +30 -ls|awk 'BEGIN {} {totsize+=$7} END { print totsize/1000000}'

Find the total size of all files older than 30 days.