find(1) User Commands find(1)NAMEfind - find files
SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/find [-H | -L] path... expression
/usr/xpg4/bin/find [-H | -L] path... expression
DESCRIPTION
The find utility recursively descends the directory hierarchy for each
path seeking files that match a Boolean expression written in the pri‐
maries given below.
find is able to descend to arbitrary depths in a file hierarchy and
does not fail due to path length limitations (unless a path operand
specified by the application exceeds PATH_MAX requirements).
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-H Causes the file information and file type evaluated for
each symbolic link encountered on the command line to be
those of the file referenced by the link, and not the link
itself. If the referenced file does not exist, the file
information and type is for the link itself. File informa‐
tion for all symbolic links not on the command line is
that of the link itself.
-L Causes the file information and file type evaluated for
each symbolic link to be those of the file referenced by
the link, and not the link itself. See NOTES.
Specifying more than one of the mutually-exclusive options -H and -L is
not considered an error. The last option specified determines the
behavior of the utility.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
path A pathname of a starting point in the directory
hierarchy.
expression The first argument that starts with a −, or is a !
or a (, and all subsequent arguments are inter‐
preted as an expression made up of the following
primaries and operators. In the descriptions, wher‐
ever n is used as a primary argument, it is inter‐
preted as a decimal integer optionally preceded by
a plus (+) or minus (−) sign, as follows:
+n more than n
n exactly n
-n less than n
Expressions
Valid expressions are:
-acl True if the file have additional ACLs defined.
-atimen True if the file was accessed n days ago. The
access time of directories in path is changed by
find itself.
-cpio device Always true. Writes the current file on device in
cpio format (5120-byte records).
-ctime n True if the file's status was changed n days ago.
-depth Always true. Causes descent of the directory hier‐
archy to be done so that all entries in a directory
are acted on before the directory itself. This can
be useful when find is used with cpio(1) to trans‐
fer files that are contained in directories without
write permission.
-exec command True if the executed command returns a zero value
as exit status. The end of command must be punctu‐
ated by an escaped semicolon (;). A command argu‐
ment {} is replaced by the current pathname. If the
last argument to -exec is {} and you specify +
rather than the semicolon (;), the command is
invoked fewer times, with {} replaced by groups of
pathnames. If any invocation of the command returns
a non-zero value as exit status, find returns a
non-zero exit status.
-follow Always true. Causes symbolic links to be followed.
When following symbolic links, find keeps track of
the directories visited so that it can detect infi‐
nite loops. For example, such a loop would occur if
a symbolic link pointed to an ancestor. This
expression should not be used with the find-type l
expression. See NOTES.
-fstype type True if the filesystem to which the file belongs is
of type type.
-group gname True if the file belongs to the group gname. If
gname is numeric and does not appear in the
/etc/group file, or in the NIS/NIS+ tables, it is
taken as a group ID.
-inum n True if the file has inode number n.
-links n True if the file has n links.
-local True if the file system type is not a remote file
system type as defined in the /etc/dfs/fstypes
file. nfs is used as the default remote filesystem
type if the /etc/dfs/fstypes file is not present.
The -local option descends the hierarchy of non-
local directories. See EXAMPLES for an example of
how to search for local files without descending.
-ls Always true. Prints current pathname together with
its associated statistics. These include (respec‐
tively):
o inode number
o size in kilobytes (1024 bytes)
o protection mode
o number of hard links
o user
o group
o size in bytes
o modification time.
If the file is a special file, the size field
instead contains the major and minor device num‐
bers.
If the file is a symbolic link, the pathname of the
linked-to file is printed preceded by `→'. The for‐
mat is identical to that of ls -gilds (see ls(1B)).
Formatting is done internally, without executing
the ls program.
-mount Always true. Restricts the search to the file sys‐
tem containing the directory specified. Does not
list mount points to other file systems.
-mtime n True if the file's data was modified n days ago.
-name pattern True if pattern matches the basename of the current
file name. Normal shell file name generation char‐
acters (seesh(1) ) can be used. A backslash (\) is
used as an escape character within the pattern. The
pattern should be escaped or quoted when find is
invoked from the shell.
Unless the character '.' is explicitly specified in
the beginning of pattern, a current file name
beginning with '.' does not match pattern when
using /usr/bin/find. /usr/xpg4/bin/find does not
make this distinction; wildcard file name genera‐
tion characters can match file names beginning with
'.'.
-ncpio device Always true. Writes the current file on device in
cpio -c format (5120 byte records).
-newer file True if the current file has been modified more
recently than the argument file.
-nogroup True if the file belongs to a group not in the
/etc/group file, or in the NIS/NIS+ tables.
-nouser True if the file belongs to a user not in the
/etc/passwd file, or in the NIS/NIS+ tables.
-ok command Like -exec, except that the generated command line
is printed with a question mark first, and is exe‐
cuted only if the response on standard input is
affirmative.
-perm [-]mode The mode argument is used to represent file mode
bits. It is identical in format to the symbolic
mode operand, symbolic_mode_list, described in
chmod(1), and is interpreted as follows. To start,
a template is assumed with all file mode bits
cleared. An op symbol of:
+ Set the appropriate mode bits in the
template
− Clear the appropriate bits
= Set the appropriate mode bits, without
regard to the contents of the file
mode creation mask of the process
The op symbol of − cannot be the first character of
mode, to avoid ambiguity with the optional leading
hyphen. Since the initial mode is all bits off,
there are no symbolic modes that need to use − as
the first character.
If the hyphen is omitted, the primary evaluates as
true when the file permission bits exactly match
the value of the resulting template.
Otherwise, if mode is prefixed by a hyphen, the
primary evaluates as true if at least all the bits
in the resulting template are set in the file per‐
mission bits.
-perm [-]onum True if the file permission flags exactly match the
octal number onum (see chmod(1)). If onum is pre‐
fixed by a minus sign (−), only the bits that are
set in onum are compared with the file permission
flags, and the expression evaluates true if they
match.
-print Always true. Causes the current pathname to be
printed.
-prune Always yields true. Does not examine any directo‐
ries or files in the directory structure below the
pattern just matched. (See EXAMPLES). If -depth is
specified, -prune has no effect.
-size n[c] True if the file is n blocks long (512 bytes per
block). If n is followed by a c, the size is in
bytes.
-type c True if the type of the file is c, where c is b, c,
d, D, f, l, p, or s for block special file, charac‐
ter special file, directory, door, plain file, sym‐
bolic link, fifo (named pipe), or socket, respec‐
tively.
-user uname True if the file belongs to the user uname. If
uname is numeric and does not appear as a login
name in the /etc/passwd file, or in the NIS/NIS+
tables, it is taken as a user ID.
-xdev Same as the -mount primary.
-xattr True if the file has extended attributes.
Complex Expressions
The primaries can be combined using the following operators (in order
of decreasing precedence):
1) ( expression ) True if the parenthesized expres‐
sion is true (parentheses are spe‐
cial to the shell and must be
escaped).
2) ! expression The negation of a primary (! is the
unary not operator).
3) expression [-a] expression Concatenation of primaries (the and
operation is implied by the juxta‐
position of two primaries).
4) expression -o expression Alternation of primaries (-o is the
or operator).
When you use find in conjunction with cpio, if you use the -L option
with cpio then you must use the -follow expression with find and vice
versa. Otherwise there are undesirable results.
If no expression is present, -print is used as the expression. Other‐
wise, if the given expression does not contain any of the primaries
-exec, -ls, -ok, or -print, the given expression is effectively
replaced by:
( given_expression ) -print
The -user, -group, and -newer primaries each evaluate their respective
arguments only once. Invocation of command specified by -exec or -ok
does not affect subsequent primaries on the same file.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of find when
encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).
EXAMPLES
Example 1 Writing Out the Hierarchy Directory
The following commands are equivalent:
example% find .
example% find . -print
They both write out the entire directory hierarchy from the current
directory.
Example 2 Removing Files
The following comand removes all files in your home directory named
a.out or *.o that have not been accessed for a week:
example% find $HOME \( -name a.out -o -name '*.o' \) \
-atime +7 -exec rm {} \;
Example 3 Printing All File Names But Skipping SCCS Directories
The following command recursively print all file names in the current
directory and below, but skipping SCCS directories:
example% find . -name SCCS -prune -o -print
Example 4 Printing all file names and the SCCS directory name
Recursively print all file names in the current directory and below,
skipping the contents of SCCS directories, but printing out the SCCS
directory name:
example% find . -print -name SCCS -prune
Example 5 Testing for the Newer File
The following command is basically equivalent to the -nt extension to
test(1):
example$ if [ -n "$(find
file1 -prune -newer file2)" ]; then
printf %s\\n "file1 is newer than file2"
Example 6 Selecting a File Using 24-hour Mode
The descriptions of -atime, -ctime, and -mtime use the terminology n
``24-hour periods''. For example, a file accessed at 23:59 is selected
by:
example% find . -atime -1 -print
at 00:01 the next day (less than 24 hours later, not more than one day
ago). The midnight boundary between days has no effect on the 24-hour
calculation.
Example 7 Printing Files Matching a User's Permission Mode
The following command recursively print all file names whose permission
mode exactly matches read, write, and execute access for user, and read
and execute access for group and other:
example% find . -perm u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx
The above could alternatively be specified as follows:
example% find . -perm a=rwx,g-w,o-w
Example 8 Printing Files with Write Access for other
The following command recursively print all file names whose permission
includes, but is not limited to, write access for other:
example% find . -perm -o+w
Example 9 Printing Local Files without Descending Non-local Directories
example% find . ! -local -prune -o -print
Example 10 Printing the Files in the Name Space Possessing Extended
Attributes
example% find . -xattr
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
that affect the execution of find: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.
PATH Determine the location of the utility_name for the
-exec and -ok primaries.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 All path operands were traversed successfully.
>0 An error occurred.
FILES
/etc/passwd Password file
/etc/group Group file
/etc/dfs/fstypes File that registers distributed file system
packages
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWcsu │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│CSI │Enabled │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │Committed │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Standard │See standards(5). │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOchmod(1), cpio(1), ls(1B), sh(1), test(1), acl(2), stat(2), umask(2),
attributes(5), environ(5), fsattr(5), largefile(5), standards(5)WARNINGS
The following options are obsolete and will not be supported in future
releases:
-cpio device Always true. Writes the current file on device in
cpio format (5120-byte records).
-ncpio device Always true. Writes the current file on device in
cpio -c format (5120-byte records).
NOTES
When using find to determine files modified within a range of time, use
the -mtime argument before the -print argument. Otherwise, find gives
all files.
Some files that might be under the Solaris root file system are actu‐
ally mount points for virtual file systems, such as mntfs or namefs.
When comparing against a ufs file system, such files are not selected
if -mount or -xdev is specified in the find expression.
Using the -L or -follow option is not recommended when descending a
file-system hierarchy that is under the control of other users. In par‐
ticular, when using -exec, symbolic links can lead the find command out
of the hierarchy in which it started. Using -type is not sufficient to
restrict the type of files on which the -exec command operates, because
there is an inherent race condition between the type-check performed by
the find command and the time the executed command operates on the file
argument.
SunOS 5.10 9 Feb 2009 find(1)