68
votes
How do I find a file by filename in Mac OSX terminal?
find . -name '*.csv' for instance worked for me with wildcards. OP could also use find . -name '*.dmg' to check his current directory, assuming he was in /.
- 791
41
votes
How can I find only the executable files under a certain directory in Linux?
I know the question specifically mentions Linux, but since it's the first result on Google, I just wanted to add the answer I was looking for.
This is tested on macOS 10.12.5:
find . -perm +111 -type ...
- 1,062
39
votes
How can I force only relative paths in "find" output?
You can use the %P format in the -printf directive:
find ${rootDir} -name '*.doc' -printf "%P\n"
will display in your example:
subdir/test.doc
second.doc
You may then use this find list in a for ...
- 491
35
votes
Accepted
Find all directories that contain a certain character and print them out
The following commands perform the required query:
find -name "*c*" -type d
starts with the current directory (no need to specify directory in case of current directory)
-name "*c*" - with name ...
- 744
32
votes
How can I find all files open within a given directory?
lsof has switches for doing this:
lsof +d '/path/to/directory' (will list open files in the folder)
lsof +D '/path/to/directory' (will list open files recursively)
- 421
32
votes
Accepted
'Find' in all opened documents in Notepad++?
Press Ctrl + F, and then click "Find All in All Opened Documents":
Alternatively, you can press Alt + O (as the 'O' is underlined).
- 20.2k
31
votes
"FIND: Parameter format not correct" and "FINDSTR: Write error" with Pipes
I was able to directly do what I needed to do with this syntax:
find.exe """Find This""" *.log
With the TRIPLE double quotes, I think 2 of them get consumed by POSH, leaving the single quote for ...
- 421
27
votes
find / grep command without searching mounted shares
man find shows:
-xdev Don't descend directories on other filesystems.
- 369
26
votes
Unix/Linux find and sort by date modified
I have a simple solution that works for both FreeBSD (OS X) and Linux:
find . -type f -exec ls -t {} +
- 369
26
votes
Accepted
find command cannot find my files which do exist
~/.config/fish/functions is a symlink. Therefore it's about [emphasis mine]:
-P
Never follow symbolic links. This is the default behaviour. When find examines or prints information a file, and the ...
- 75.7k
23
votes
Accepted
How to get rid of fractional seconds in find using -printf?
You can truncate the fractional part using the %.n formatting syntax, where n is an integer specifying the length of the string you want to keep. In your particular case, the incantation would be:
...
- 3,801
21
votes
Accepted
find: "-exec rm {} \;" vs. "-delete" - why is the former widely recommended?
tl;dr: -delete is not required by POSIX, -exec is.
Facts
POSIX 1003.1 man page for find specifies -exec but not -delete.
This means -exec should work virtually everywhere. I would be surprised ...
- 75.7k
20
votes
Accepted
Ack/Ag/Pt just list files?
With both ag and ack you just provide the -l flag.
e.g.
$ ag -l foo
file.js
file2.py
- 316
15
votes
Accepted
unix find command on cmder.exe in windows
Simplest solution is to create an alias to the find executable within the cmder installation folder:
λ which find
/c/WINDOWS/system32/find
λ find --help
FIND: FIND: Parameter format not correct
λ ...
- 3,852
14
votes
Accepted
How to find files within a size range?
find -iname "*.zip" -size +$((60*1024*1024))c -size -$((70*1024*1024))c
Do NOT use the abbreviations 60M and 70M as this will also exclude all files of size greater than 69MB including 69....
- 326
14
votes
What does '{} \;' mean in the 'find' command context?
{} has absolutely no meaning to bash, so is passed unmodified as an argument to the command executed, here find.
On the other hand, ; has a specific meaning to bash. It is normally used to separate ...
- 14.2k
14
votes
Accepted
How to remove extension from pathname passed as {} in `find -exec`?
There is no mechanism in find itself that allows you to get a substring from whatever is substituted for {}. Even adding a suffix (like you did: {}.aac) may not be supported. POSIX says:
A ...
- 75.7k
14
votes
Accepted
In bash, how to find all copies of a given file in particular directories?
If I issue find /a_long_path_2 /a_long_path_3 -size 12345c -iname \*.doc, the list I get is too large to check manually via diff. Automation is needed.
Add -exec cmp -s /a_long_path_1/foo.doc {} \; -...
- 75.7k
12
votes
Accepted
Appending new lines to multiple files
There are few issues.
>> in your first command will be interpreted by your current shell as a redirection to a file literally named {}, unless it's quoted.
*.ovpn may be expanded by shell ...
- 75.7k
11
votes
Linux command to find files changed in the last n seconds
The simplest way to do this is:
find . -name "*.txt" -newermt '6 seconds ago'
The -mtime -60s option, mentioned in an answer, doesn't work on many versions of find, even in 2016. -newermt is a much ...
- 1,754
10
votes
Accepted
How do I pass combined commands to 'find -exec'?
You can use a complex shell command in the argument to exec by explicitly invoking a shell there.
find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec sh -c 'grep FirstKeyWord "$1" | grep SecondKeyWord' -- {} \;
This ...
- 374
10
votes
Accepted
'find' utility does not output all files when using wildcards
It's because of shell globbing. Try:
find . -name "*.exe"
When not quoted, *.exe expands to all *.exe files in the current directory, unless there are none. It so happens you have just one such a ...
- 75.7k
10
votes
Accepted
Subshell won't work as indented
Subshells, like variables, are processed before the whole command line is run. The $() is interpreted by your parent shell, not by 'find', and no special treatment is given to 'find -exec' as 'find' ...
- 465k
9
votes
Faster alternatives to "find" and "locate"?
For a find replacement, check out fd. It has a simpler / more intuitive interface than the original find command, and is quite a bit faster.
- 191
9
votes
Find directories containing a certain number of files
Terdon's answer is generally well illustrative of the right approach, however here's a slightly shorter answer which only uses find and bash (doesn't need ls, wc and awk), and can also deal with files ...
- 191
9
votes
Accepted
Recursively find files with specific hard link count
In find there is the -links primary:
-links n
The primary shall evaluate as true if the file has n links.
(source)
To find regular files that have a hardlink count of 1, use:
find . -type f -links 1
...
- 75.7k
9
votes
Accepted
Using find in macOS terminal with regex
There are a couple of issues here. Firstly, as John mentioned, -name does sub-string matching with globs, you need to use -regex, and secondly, there are regular expression dialect incompatibilities. ...
- 6,613
8
votes
Is there any way of making Ctrl+f in Chrome use the selected text, as per Firefox?
Actually the feature is there, at least on Mac OS.
It's called "Use selection for Find" and it's bound to ⌘+E.
Press ⌘+E ⌘+G to highlight all words equal to the selected!
Press ⌘+E ⌘+F ⌘+G to ...
- 440
8
votes
Faster alternatives to "find" and "locate"?
As of early 2021 I evaluated a few tools for similar use cases and integration with fzf:
tl;dr: plocate is a very fast alternative to mlocate in most cases. (GNU) find often still seems to be hard to ...
- 505
8
votes
How to ignore certain filenames using "find"?
By using "-not" and "-and":
find . -type f \( \
-not -name "${1}" \
-and -not -name "${2}" \
\)
In one line:
find . -type f \( -not -name "${1}&...
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