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FIND(1) General Commands Manual FIND(1) NAME find -- walk a file hierarchy SYNOPSIS find [-H | -L | -P] [-Xdx] [-f file] [file ...] expression DESCRIPTION Find recursively descends the directory tree for each file listed, evaluating an expression (composed of the ``primaries'' and ``operands'' listed below) in terms of each file in the tree. The options are as follows: -H The -H option causes the file information and file type (see stat(2)) returned for each symbolic link specified on the com- mand line to be those of the file referenced by the link, not the link itself. If the referenced file does not exist, the file information and type will be for the link itself. File information of all symbolic links not on the command line is that of the link itself. -L The -L option causes the file information and file type (see stat(2)) returned for each symbolic link to be those of the file referenced by the link, not the link itself. If the ref- erenced file does not exist, the file information and type will be for the link itself. -P The -P option causes the file information and file type (see stat(2)) returned for each symbolic link to be those of the link itself. -X The -X option is a modification to permit find to be safely used in conjunction with xargs(1). If a file name contains any of the delimiting characters used by xargs, a diagnostic mes- sage is displayed on standard error, and the file is skipped. The delimiting characters include single (`` ' '') and double (`` " '') quotes, backslash (``\''), space, tab and newline characters. -d The -d option causes find to perform a depth-first traversal, i.e. directories are visited in post-order and all entries in a directory will be acted on before the directory itself. By de- fault, find visits directories in pre-order, i.e. before their contents. Note, the default is not a breadth-first traversal. -f The -f option specifies a file hierarchy for find to traverse. File hierarchies may also be specified as the operands immedi- ately following the options. -x The -x option prevents find from descending into directories that have a device number different than that of the file from which the descent began. PRIMARIES -atime n True if the difference between the file last access time and the time find was started, rounded up to the next full 24-hour period, is n 24-hour periods. -ctime n True if the difference between the time of last change of file status information and the time find was started, rounded up to the next full 24-hour period, is n 24-hour periods. -delete Delete found files and/or directories. Always returns True. This executes from the current working directory as find re- curses down the tree. It will not attempt to delete a filename with a ``/'' character in it's pathname relative to "." for se- curity reasons. Depth-first traversal processing is implied by this option. -exec utility [argument ...]; True if the program named utility returns a zero value as its exit status. Optional arguments may be passed to the utility. The expression must be terminated by a semicolon (``;''). If the string ``{}'' appears anywhere in the utility name or the arguments it is replaced by the pathname of the current file. Utility will be executed from the directory from which find was executed. -fstype type True if the file is contained in a file system of type type. Currently supported types are ``local'', ``mfs'', ``nfs'', ``msdos'', ``rdonly'' and ``ufs''. The types ``local'' and ``rdonly'' are not specific file system types. The former matches any file system physically mounted on the system where the find is being executed and the latter matches any file sys- tem which is mounted read-only. -group gname True if the file belongs to the group gname. If gname is nu- meric and there is no such group name, then gname is treated as a group id. -inum n True if the file has inode number n. -links n True if the file has n links. -ls This primary always evaluates to true. The following informa- tion for the current file is written to standard output: its inode number, size in 512-byte blocks, file permissions, number of hard links, owner, group, size in bytes, last modification time, and pathname. If the file is a block or character spe- cial file, the major and minor numbers will be displayed in- stead of the size in bytes. If the file is a symbolic link, the pathname of the linked-to file will be displayed preceded by ``->''. The format is identical to that produced by ``ls -dgils''. -mtime n True if the difference between the file last modification time and the time find was started, rounded up to the next full 24-hour period, is n 24-hour periods. -ok utility[argument ...]; The -ok primary is identical to the -exec primary with the ex- ception that find requests user affirmation for the execution of the utility by printing a message to the terminal and read- ing a response. If the response is other than ``y'' the com- mand is not executed and the value of the ok expression is false. -name pattern True if the last component of the pathname being examined matches pattern. Special shell pattern matching characters (``['', ``]'', ``*'', and ``?'') may be used as part of pattern. These characters may be matched explicitly by escap- ing them with a backslash (``\''). -newer file True if the current file has a more recent last modification time than file. -nouser True if the file belongs to an unknown user. -nogroup True if the file belongs to an unknown group. -path pattern True if the pathname being examined matches pattern. Special shell pattern matching characters (``['', ``]'', ``*'', and ``?'') may be used as part of pattern. These characters may be matched explicitly by escaping them with a backslash (``\''). Slashes (``/'') are treated as normal characters and do not have to be matched explicitly. -perm [-mode] The mode may be either symbolic (see chmod(1)) or an octal num- ber. If the mode is symbolic, a starting value of zero is as- sumed and the mode sets or clears permissions without regard to the process' file mode creation mask. If the mode is octal, only bits 07777 (S_ISUID | S_ISGID | S_ISTXT | S_IRWXU | S_IRWXG | S_IRWXO) of the file's mode bits participate in the comparison. If the mode is preceded by a dash (``-''), this primary evaluates to true if at least all of the bits in the mode are set in the file's mode bits. If the mode is not pre- ceded by a dash, this primary evaluates to true if the bits in the mode exactly match the file's mode bits. Note, the first character of a symbolic mode may not be a dash (``-''). -print This primary always evaluates to true. It prints the pathname of the current file to standard output. The expression is ap- pended to the user specified expression if none of -exec, -ls, -print0, or -ok are specified. -print0 This primary always evaluates to true. It prints the pathname of the current file to standard output, followed by a ASCII NUL character (character code 0). -prune This primary always evaluates to true. It causes find to not descend into the current file. Note, the -prune primary has no effect if the -d option was specified. -size n[c] True if the file's size, rounded up, in 512-byte blocks is n. If n is followed by a ``c'', then the primary is true if the file's size is n bytes. -type t True if the file is of the specified type. Possible file types are as follows: b block special c character special d directory f regular file l symbolic link p FIFO s socket -user uname True if the file belongs to the user uname. If uname is nu- meric and there is no such user name, then uname is treated as a user id. All primaries which take a numeric argument allow the number to be pre- ceded by a plus sign (``+'') or a minus sign (``-''). A preceding plus sign means ``more than n'', a preceding minus sign means ``less than n'' and neither means ``exactly n'' . OPERATORS The primaries may be combined using the following operators. The oper- ators are listed in order of decreasing precedence. (expression) This evaluates to true if the parenthesized expression evaluates to true. !expression This is the unary NOT operator. It evaluates to true if the expression is false. expression -and expression expression expression The -and operator is the logical AND operator. As it is implied by the juxtaposition of two expressions it does not have to be specified. The expression evaluates to true if both expressions are true. The second expression is not evaluated if the first expression is false. expression -or expression The -or operator is the logical OR operator. The expres- sion evaluates to true if either the first or the second expression is true. The second expression is not evalu- ated if the first expression is true. All operands and primaries must be separate arguments to find. Pri- maries which themselves take arguments expect each argument to be a separate argument to find. EXAMPLES The following examples are shown as given to the shell: find / \! -name "*.c" -print Print out a list of all the files whose names do not end in ``.c''. find / -newer ttt -user wnj -print Print out a list of all the files owned by user ``wnj'' that are newer than the file ``ttt''. find / \! \( -newer ttt -user wnj \) -print Print out a list of all the files which are not both newer than ``ttt'' and owned by ``wnj''. find / \( -newer ttt -or -user wnj \) -print Print out a list of all the files that are either owned by ``wnj'' or that are newer than ``ttt''. SEE ALSO chmod(1), locate(1), stat(2), fts(3), getgrent(3), getpwent(3), strmode(3), symlink(7) STANDARDS The find utility syntax is a superset of the syntax specified by the IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") standard. The -s and -X options and the -inum, -print0, -delete, and -ls pri- maries are extensions to IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2"). Historically, the -d, -h and -x options were implemented using the pri- maries ``-depth'', ``-follow'', and ``-xdev''. These primaries always evaluated to true. As they were really global variables that took ef- fect before the traversal began, some legal expressions could have un- expected results. An example is the expression ``-print -o -depth''. As -print always evaluates to true, the standard order of evaluation implies that -depth would never be evaluated. This is not the case. The operator ``-or'' was implemented as ``-o'', and the operator ``-and'' was implemented as ``-a''. Historic implementations of the exec and ok primaries did not replace the string ``{}'' in the utility name or the utility arguments if it had preceding or following non-whitespace characters. This version re- places it no matter where in the utility name or arguments it appears. BUGS The special characters used by find are also special characters to many shell programs. In particular, the characters ``*'', ``['', ``]'', ``?'', ``('', ``)'', ``!'', ``\'' and ``;'' may have to be escaped from the shell. As there is no delimiter separating options and file names or file names and the expression, it is difficult to specify files named ``-xdev'' or ``!''. These problems are handled by the -f option and the getopt(3) ``--'' construct. The -delete primary do not interact well with other options that cause the filesystem tree traversal options to be changed. HISTORY A find command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX. FreeBSD 2.2.1 April 1, 1994 FIND(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | PRIMARIES | OPERATORS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | BUGS | HISTORY
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