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FIND(1) General Commands Manual FIND(1) NAME find -- walk a file hierarchy SYNOPSIS find [-H | -L | -P] [-EXdsx] [-f path] path ... [expression] find [-H | -L | -P] [-EXdsx] -f path [path ...] [expression] DESCRIPTION The find utility recursively descends the directory tree for each path 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: -E Interpret regular expressions following the -regex and -iregex pri- maries as extended (modern) regular expressions rather than basic regular expressions (BRE's). The re_format(7) manual page fully describes both formats. -H Cause the file information and file type (see stat(2)) returned for each symbolic link specified on the command line to be those of the file referenced by the link, not the link itself. If the refer- enced 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 Cause 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 referenced file does not exist, the file information and type will be for the link itself. This option is equivalent to the deprecated -follow primary. -P Cause the file information and file type (see stat(2)) returned for each symbolic link to be those of the link itself. This is the de- fault. -X Permit find to be safely used in conjunction with xargs(1). If a file name contains any of the delimiting characters used by xargs(1), a diagnostic message is displayed on standard error, and the file is skipped. The delimiting characters include single (" ' ") and double (" " ") quotes, backslash ("\"), space, tab and new- line characters. However, you may wish to consider the -print0 primary in conjunc- tion with "xargs -0" as an effective alternative. -d Cause find to perform a depth-first traversal. This option is a BSD-specific equivalent of the -depth primary specified by IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 ("POSIX.1"). Refer to its de- scription under "PRIMARIES" for more information. -f path Add path to the list of paths that will be recursed into. This is useful when path begins with a character that would otherwise be interpreted as an expression, namely ""!, "(" and "-". -s Cause find to traverse the file hierarchies in lexicographical or- der, i.e., alphabetical order within each directory. Note: `find -s' and `find | sort' may give different results. For example, `find -s' puts a directory `foo' with all its contents before a directory `foo'. but `find | sort' puts the directory name `foo'. before any string like `foo/bar' because `.' goes be- fore `/' in ASCII. In locales other than C results may vary more due to collation differences. -x Prevent find from descending into directories that have a device number different than that of the file from which the descent be- gan. This option is equivalent to the deprecated -xdev primary. PRIMARIES All primaries which take a numeric argument allow the number to be preceded 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". -Bmin n True if the difference between the time of a file's inode creation and the time find was started, rounded up to the next full minute, is n minutes. -Bnewer file Same as -newerBm. -Btime n[smhdw] If no units are specified, this primary evaluates to true if the difference between the time of a file's inode creation and the time find was started, rounded up to the next full 24-hour period, is n 24-hour periods. If units are specified, this primary evaluates to true if the dif- ference between the time of a file's inode creation and the time find was started is exactly n units. Please refer to the -atime primary description for information on supported time units. -acl May be used in conjunction with other primaries to locate files with extended ACLs. See acl(3) for more information. -amin [-|+]n True if the difference between the file last access time and the time find was started, rounded up to the next full minute, is more than n (+n), less than n (-n), or exactly n minutes ago. -anewer file Same as -neweram. -atime n[smhdw] If no units are specified, this primary evaluates to 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. If units are specified, this primary evaluates to true if the dif- ference between the file last access time and the time find was started is exactly n units. Possible time units are as follows: s second m minute (60 seconds) h hour (60 minutes) d day (24 hours) w week (7 days) Any number of units may be combined in one -atime argument, for ex- ample, "-atime -1h30m". Units are probably only useful when used in conjunction with the + or - modifier. -cmin [-|+]n True if the difference between the time of last change of file sta- tus information and the time find was started, rounded up to the next full minute, is more than n (+n), less than n (-n), or exactly n minutes ago. -cnewer file Same as -newercm. -ctime n[smhdw] If no units are specified, this primary evaluates to true if the difference between the time of last change of file status informa- tion and the time find was started, rounded up to the next full 24-hour period, is n 24-hour periods. If units are specified, this primary evaluates to true if the dif- ference between the time of last change of file status information and the time find was started is exactly n units. Please refer to the -atime primary description for information on supported time units. -d Non-portable, BSD-specific version of depth. GNU find implements this as a primary in mistaken emulation of FreeBSD find. -delete Delete found files and/or directories. Always returns true. This executes from the current working directory as find recurses down the tree. It will not attempt to delete a filename with a "/" character in its pathname relative to "." for security reasons. Depth-first traversal processing is implied by this option. The -delete primary will fail to delete a directory if it is not empty. Following symlinks is incompatible with this option. WARNING: The -delete primary will immediately attempt to delete the current path when evaluated. Be mindful of its place in the ex- pression; as a general rule, it should almost always come last. If in doubt, try running with -print in place of -delete first. See "OPERATORS" below for additional information on the order of evalu- ation. -depth Always true; same as the non-portable -d option. Cause 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 default, find visits directories in pre- order, i.e., before their contents. Note, the default is not a breadth-first traversal. The -depth primary can be useful when find is used with cpio(1) to process files that are contained in directories with unusual per- missions. It ensures that you have write permission while you are placing files in a directory, then sets the directory's permissions as the last thing. -depth n True if the depth of the file relative to the starting point of the traversal is n. -empty True if the current file or directory is empty. -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 ex- pression must be terminated by a semicolon (";"). If you invoke find from a shell you may need to quote the semicolon if the shell would otherwise treat it as a control operator. If the string "{}" appears anywhere in the utility name or the arguments it is re- placed by the pathname of the current file. Utility will be exe- cuted from the directory from which find was executed. Utility and arguments are not subject to the further expansion of shell pat- terns and constructs. -exec utility [argument ...] {} + Same as -exec, except that "{}" is replaced with as many pathnames as possible for each invocation of utility. This behaviour is sim- ilar to that of xargs(1). The primary always returns true; if at least one invocation of utility returns a non-zero exit status, find will return a non-zero exit status. -execdir utility [argument ...] ; The -execdir primary is identical to the -exec primary with the ex- ception that utility will be executed from the directory that holds the current file. The filename substituted for the string "{}" is not qualified. -execdir utility [argument ...] {} + Same as -execdir, except that "{}" is replaced with as many path- names as possible for each invocation of utility. This behaviour is similar to that of xargs(1). The primary always returns true; if at least one invocation of utility returns a non-zero exit sta- tus, find will return a non-zero exit status. -executable Matches files which are executable by the current user. This test makes use of the access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do UID mapping (or root-squashing). This is a GNU find extension. -flags [-|+]flags,notflags The flags are specified using symbolic names (see chflags(1)). Those with the "no" prefix (except "nodump") are said to be notflags. Flags in flags are checked to be set, and flags in notflags are checked to be not set. Note that this is different from -perm, which only allows the user to specify mode bits that are set. If flags are preceded by a dash ("-"), this primary evaluates to true if at least all of the bits in flags and none of the bits in notflags are set in the file's flags bits. If flags are preceded by a plus ("+"), this primary evaluates to true if any of the bits in flags is set in the file's flags bits, or any of the bits in notflags is not set in the file's flags bits. Otherwise, this pri- mary evaluates to true if the bits in flags exactly match the file's flags bits, and none of the flags bits match those of notflags. -fprint filename This primary always evaluates to true. This creates filename or truncates the file if it already exists. The file is created at startup. It writes the pathname of the current file to this file, followed by a newline character. The file will be empty if no files are matched. -fprint0 filename This primary always evaluates to true. This creates filename or truncates the file if it already exists. The file is created at startup. It writes the pathname of the current file to this file, followed by an ASCII NUL character (character code 0). The file will be empty if no files are matched. -fstype type True if the file is contained in a file system of type type. The lsvfs(1) command can be used to find out the types of file systems that are available on the system. In addition, there are two pseudo-types, "local" and "rdonly". The former matches any file system physically mounted on the system where the find is being ex- ecuted and the latter matches any file system which is mounted read-only. -gid gname The same thing as -group gname for compatibility with GNU find. GNU find imposes a restriction that gname is numeric, while find does not. -group gname True if the file belongs to the group gname. If gname is numeric and there is no such group name, then gname is treated as a group ID. -ignore_readdir_race Ignore errors because a file or a directory is deleted after read- ing the name from a directory. This option does not affect errors occurring on starting points. -ilname pattern Like -lname, but the match is case insensitive. This is a GNU find extension. -iname pattern Like -name, but the match is case insensitive. -inum n True if the file has inode number n. -ipath pattern Like -path, but the match is case insensitive. -iregex pattern Like -regex, but the match is case insensitive. -iwholename pattern The same thing as -ipath, for GNU find compatibility. -links n True if the file has n links. -lname pattern Like -name, but the contents of the symbolic link are matched in- stead of the file name. Note that this only matches broken sym- bolic links if symbolic links are being followed. This is a GNU find extension. -ls This primary always evaluates to true. The following information for the current file is written to standard output: its inode num- ber, 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 special file, the device number will be displayed instead 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 -dils". -maxdepth n Always true; descend at most n directory levels below the command line arguments. If any -maxdepth primary is specified, it applies to the entire expression even if it would not normally be evalu- ated. "-maxdepth 0" limits the whole search to the command line arguments. -mindepth n Always true; do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than n. If any -mindepth primary is specified, it applies to the entire expression even if it would not normally be evaluated. "-mindepth 1" processes all but the command line arguments. -mmin [-|+]n True if the difference between the file last modification time and the time find was started, rounded up to the next full minute, is more than n (+n), less than n (-n), or exactly n minutes ago. -mnewer file Same as -newer. -mount The same thing as -xdev, for GNU find compatibility. -mtime n[smhdw] If no units are specified, this primary evaluates to 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. If units are specified, this primary evaluates to true if the dif- ference between the file last modification time and the time find was started is exactly n units. Please refer to the -atime primary description for information on supported time units. -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 escaping them with a backslash ("\"). -newer file True if the current file has a more recent last modification time than file. -newerXY file True if the current file has a more recent last access time (X=a), inode creation time (X=B), change time (X=c), or modification time (X=m) than the last access time (Y=a), inode creation time (Y=B), change time (Y=c), or modification time (Y=m) of file. In addi- tion, if Y=t, then file is instead interpreted as a direct date specification of the form understood by ISO8601 or RFC822. Note that -newermm is equivalent to -newer. -nogroup True if the file belongs to an unknown group. -noignore_readdir_race Turn off the effect of -ignore_readdir_race. This is default be- haviour. -noleaf This option is for GNU find compatibility. In GNU find it disables an optimization not relevant to find, so it is ignored. -nouser True if the file belongs to an unknown user. -ok utility [argument ...] ; The -ok primary is identical to the -exec primary with the excep- tion that find requests user affirmation for the execution of the utility by printing a message to the terminal and reading a re- sponse. If the response is not affirmative (`y' in the "POSIX" lo- cale), the command is not executed and the value of the -ok expres- sion is false. -okdir utility [argument ...] ; The -okdir primary is identical to the -execdir primary with the same exception as described for the -ok primary. -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 es- caping 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 number. If the mode is symbolic, a starting value of zero is assumed 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 preceded by a plus ("+") this primary evaluates to true if any of the bits in the mode are set in the file's mode bits. A slash ("/") is also accepted with the same meaning as plus for compatibility with GNU find. Otherwise, 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. If none of -exec, -ls, -print0, or -ok is specified, the given expression shall be effec- tively replaced by ( given expression ) -print. -print0 This primary always evaluates to true. It prints the pathname of the current file to standard output, followed by an ASCII NUL char- acter (character code 0). -printf fmt This primary always evaluates to true. It prints information about the file, interpreting `and' `%' escape sequences as described in the PRINTF FORMATS section. Unlike -print, -printf does not add a newline automatically. -prune This primary always evaluates to true. It causes find to not de- scend into the current file. Note, the -prune primary has no ef- fect if the -d option was specified. -quit Causes find to terminate immediately. -readable Matches files which are readable by the current user. This test makes use of the access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do UID mapping (or root-squashing). This is a GNU find extension. -regex pattern True if the whole path of the file matches pattern using regular expression. To match a file named "./foo/xyzzy", you can use the regular expression ".*/[xyz]*" or ".*/foo/.*", but not "xyzzy" or "/foo/". -samefile name True if the file is a hard link to name. If the command option -L is specified, it is also true if the file is a symbolic link and points to name. -size n[ckMGTP] 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 (characters). Similarly if n is followed by a scale indi- cator then the file's size is compared to n scaled as: k kilobytes (1024 bytes) M megabytes (1024 kilobytes) G gigabytes (1024 megabytes) T terabytes (1024 gigabytes) P petabytes (1024 terabytes) -sparse True if the current file is sparse, i.e. has fewer blocks allocated than expected based on its size in bytes. This might also match files that have been compressed by the filesystem. -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 -uid uname The same thing as -user uname for compatibility with GNU find. GNU find imposes a restriction that uname is numeric, while find does not. -user uname True if the file belongs to the user uname. If uname is numeric and there is no such user name, then uname is treated as a user ID. -wholename pattern The same thing as -path, for GNU find compatibility. -writable Matches files which are writable by the current user. This test makes use of the access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do UID mapping (or root-squashing). This is a GNU find extension. -xattr Matches files which have extended attributes set in any supported namespace. -xattrname xattr Matches files which have the specified xattr extended attribute set. All supported namespaces are searched by default, but xattr may be prefixed with "user:" or "system:" to filter by namespace. Note that named attributes are not supported, only extended attrib- utes as set by, e.g., setextattr(8). OPERATORS The primaries may be combined using the following operators. The operators are listed in order of decreasing precedence. ( expression ) This evaluates to true if the parenthesized expression evaluates to true. ! expression -not expression This is the unary NOT operator. It evaluates to true if the ex- pression is false. -false Always false. -true Always true. 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 speci- fied. The expression evaluates to true if both expressions are true. The second expression is not evaluated if the first expres- sion is false. expression -or expression The -or operator is the logical OR operator. The expression evalu- ates to true if either the first or the second expression is true. The second expression is not evaluated if the first expression is true. All operands and primaries must be separate arguments to find. Primaries which themselves take arguments expect each argument to be a separate argu- ment to find. PRINTF FORMATS The following `\' escapes are recognized: \a Write a <bell> character. \b Write a <backspace> character. \c Writes no characters, but terminates the string and flushes the output so far after each match. \f Write a <form-feed> character. \n Write a <new-line> character. \r Write a <carriage return> character. \t Write a <tab> character. \v Write a <vertical tab> character. \' Write a <single quote> character. \\ Write a backslash character. \num Write a byte whose value is the 1-, 2-, or 3-digit octal num- ber num. Multibyte characters can be constructed using mul- tiple \num sequences. Each format specification is introduced by the percent character (``%''). The remainder of the format specification includes, in the following order: Zero or more of the following flags: # A `#' character, has no effect on almost all formats. It is not yet implemented. - A minus sign `-' which specifies left adjustment of the output in the indicated field; It is not yet implemented. Field Width: An optional digit string specifying a field width; if the output string has fewer bytes than the field width it will be blank-padded on the left (or right, if the left-adjust- ment indicator has been given) to make up the field width (note that a leading zero is a flag, but an embedded zero is part of a field width); It is not yet implemented. Precision: An optional period, `.', followed by an optional digit string giving a precision which specifies the maximum num- ber of bytes to be printed from a string; if the digit string is missing, the precision is treated as zero; It is not yet implemented. Format: One or two characters, described below, which indicates the information to display. p Path to file f Filename without directories. h Path relative to the starting point, or '.' if that's empty for some reason. P Unimplemented -- File with command line arg. H Unimplemented -- Command line arg. g gid in human readable form. G gid as a number. h uid in human readable form. U uid as a number. m File permission mode in octal. M File mode in ls(1) standard form. k File size in KiB (units of 1024 bytes). b File size in blocks (Always 512 byte units, even if underlying storage size differs). s Size in bytes of the file. S Sparseness of the file. The blocks the file occu- pies times 512 divided by the file size. d Depth in the tree D Device number for the file. F Unimplemented -- Filesystem type where the file re- sides. l Object of the symbolic link. i Inode of the file. n Number of hard links. y A single character representing the type of the file. Y A single character representing the type of the file. If the file is a symbolic link, show infor- mation for the target of the link instead, or `L' if the link loops, `N' if the target does not ex- ist, or `'? if any other error occurs while at- tempting to determine the type of the target. a Access time of the file. A Access time of the file in strftime format. Takes an additional argument. B Birth time of the file in strftime format. Takes an additional argument. c Creation time of the file. C Creation time of the file in strftime format. Takes an additional argument. t Modification time of the file. T Modification time of the file in strftime format. Takes an additional argument. Any format not listed is not supported, though the error changes. ENVIRONMENT The LANG, LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES and LC_TIME environment variables affect the execution of the find utility as described in envi- ron(7). 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. find / -newerct '1 minute ago' -print Print out a list of all the files whose inode change time is more recent than the current time minus one minute. find / -type f -exec echo {} \; Use the echo(1) command to print out a list of all the files. find -L /usr/ports/packages -type l -exec rm -- {} + Delete all broken symbolic links in /usr/ports/packages. find /usr/src -name CVS -prune -o -depth +6 -print Find files and directories that are at least seven levels deep in the working directory /usr/src. find /usr/src -name CVS -prune -o -mindepth 7 -print Is not equivalent to the previous example, since -prune is not evaluated below level seven. COMPATIBILITY The -follow primary is deprecated; the -L option should be used instead. See the "STANDARDS" section below for details. SEE ALSO chflags(1), chmod(1), locate(1), lsvfs(1), whereis(1), which(1), xargs(1), extattr(2), stat(2), acl(3), fts(3), getgrent(3), getpwent(3), strmode(3), ascii(7), re_format(7), symlink(7), setextattr(8) STANDARDS The find utility syntax is a superset of the syntax specified by the IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 ("POSIX.1") standard. All the single character options except -H and -L as well as -amin, -anewer, -cmin, -cnewer, -delete, -empty, -fstype, -iname, -inum, -iregex, -ls, -maxdepth, -mindepth, -mmin, -not, -path, -print0, -regex, -sparse and all of the -B* birthtime related primaries are extensions to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 ("POSIX.1"). Historically, the -d, -L 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 effect before the traversal began, some legal expressions could have unexpected 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 imple- mented 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 preced- ing or following non-whitespace characters. This version replaces it no matter where in the utility name or arguments it appears. The -E option was inspired by the equivalent grep(1) and sed(1) options. The -perm primary accepts a leading slash ("/") as an alias for a leading plus ("+") for its argument as an extension of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 ("POSIX.1") to be compatible with GNU find. HISTORY A simple find command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX and was removed in Version 3 AT&T UNIX. It was rewritten for Version 5 AT&T UNIX and was later enhanced for the Programmer's Workbench (PWB). These changes were later incorporated in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. 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) "--" con- struct. The -delete primary does not interact well with other options that cause the file system tree traversal options to be changed. The -mindepth and -maxdepth primaries are actually global options (as docu- mented above). They should probably be replaced by options which look like options. FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly February 14, 2026 FIND(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | PRIMARIES | OPERATORS | PRINTF FORMATS | ENVIRONMENT | EXAMPLES | COMPATIBILITY | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | HISTORY | BUGS
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