"find" command is one of the important commands in Linux. It makes easy for us to find a file or a directory.We can also find the unused files from last few days and delete it. "find" command also makes it easy to search for files which have been modified few hours or days back.
Below are the some of the examples of using find command :
Find files using name :
[root@localhost ~]#find /root -name anaconda-ks.cfg
Find files ignoring the case
[root@localhost ~]#find /usr/src -iname makefile
Find with mindepth and maxdepth i.e limit search to specific directory
The command below gives the list of passwd file in whole /
[root@localhost ~]#find / -name passwd
/usr/bin/passwd
/usr/share/doc/nss_ldap-264/pam.d/passwd
/usr/lib/news/bin/auth/passwd
/etc/passwd
/etc/pam.d/passwd
Find files with inode numbers
Lets create the test file and note down its inode number
[root@localhost ~]# touch test-file
[root@localhost ~]# ls -il test-file
1632299 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2011-02-22 22:44 test-file
Now lets find the file by inode number
[root@localhost ~]# find -inum 1632299
./test-file
Find the file by inode number and rename it
[root@localhost ~]# find -inum 1632299 -exec mv {} new-test-file \;
[root@localhost ~]# ls -il
1632299 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2011-02-22 22:44 new-test-file
Now if we want to search files just one directory level down
[root@localhost ~]#find / -maxdepth 2 -name passwd
/etc/passwd
If we want to search files two directories level down
/usr/bin/passwd
/etc/passwd
/etc/pam.d/passwd
If we want to find the files between subdirectory level 2 and 4
[root@localhost ~]#find / -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 5 -name passwd
/usr/bin/passwd
/etc/passwd
/etc/pam.d/passwd
Find the files and execute commands on them
first we create some files with .tmp and .c extension in /tmp directory
[root@localhost ~]#cd /tmp
[root@localhost tmp]# touch file{1,2,3,4}.tmp
[root@localhost tmp]#touch file{1,2,3,4}.c
[root@localhost tmp]#ls
file1.c file1.tmp file2.cpp file3.c file3.tmp file4.cpp
file1.cpp file2.c file2.tmp file3.cpp file4.c file4.tmp
Now lets search .tmp files and remove them
[root@localhost ~]#find /tmp -name *.tmp -exec rm -fr {} \;
Find all the files which has rw permission to owner/user
[root@localhost ~]#find /root -perm -u=rw -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
Find files world writable and list them
[root@localhost ~]#find /root -perm -o=rw -exec ls -ld {} \;
Find file which has 666 permission:
[root@localhost ~]# find /root -perm 666 -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
No result as no file with 666 permission
Let's create a file with with permission 666
[root@localhost ~]# touch file11
[root@localhost ~]# chmod 666 file11
[root@localhost ~]# find /root -perm 666 -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 2011-02-22 23:24 /root/file11
