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find command examples

I’ve used find extensively and always wanted to writeup a nice post on this, but the linked post trumps my effort! Copy pasted from his blog, as the person’s allowed to do so. Also, as a general note – before using exec with the actual command, do preview it!

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remove empty directories
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find . -depth -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \;`

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change various file attributes
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find . -type f -exec chgrp users {} \;

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;`

<br /> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> find all 'iso' files (case insensitive)<br /> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> find -iname '*.iso'

`example output:
./Documents/ubuntu-10.04.1-server-i386.iso
./photos.iso
./pauls_wedding_video.iso
./CentOS-5.3-i386-bin-DVD/CentOS-5.3-i386-bin-DVD.iso

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Find all the file with the name ‘ruby’ in them. (starts in the current directory)
Note:
-name is case sensitive
-iname is insensitve
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find -name ruby

example output:
./Download/jruby-1.1.5/lib/ruby
./.gem/ruby

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find all the pdf files > 10M and list their details
Note: {} stands for the file name, \; terminates the command
(the output below is little ugly because of word-wrap)
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find . -iname ‘*.pdf’ -and -size +10M -exec ls -l {} \;

example output:
-rw-rw-r– 1 chuck chuck 11173003 2008-11-07 06:14 ./Desktop/SecurityPlus.PDF
-rw-rw-r– 1 chuck chuck 12857446 2009-04-17 13:55 ./Documents/RoR/Railspace/Railspace.pdf
-rw-rw-r– 1 chuck chuck 12894140 2009-08-18 15:01 ./Documents/Calculus, Applications and Theory.pdf
-rw-rw-r– 1 chuck chuck 29461154 2009-10-10 17:13 ./Documents/PDF’s/Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition.pdf
-rw-rw-r– 1 chuck chuck 12857446 2009-04-17 13:55 ./Documents/PDF’s/Railspace.pdf

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find all txt files in current directory that contain “ruby”
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find . -iname “.txt” -print0 |xargs -0 grep ruby

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find all php files in current and sup-directories that contain “legend”. list names only.
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find . -iname ‘.php’ -exec grep -l “legend” {} \;

example output:
./login.php
./includes/customer_form.html.php
./customers/form.html.php
./customers/orginal_form.html.php
./customer_record2.php

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find all subdirs and set excutiable bit:
Note: {} stands for the file name, \; terminates the command
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find * -type d -exec chmod a+x {} \;

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find all extentions in subdirectories
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find . -type f | sed -e ’s/..//’ | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

example output:
10 htm
7 jpg
4 gif
1 css

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change extension of all files from .html to .htm in all subdirectoies
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find . -iname “.html” | xargs rename .html .htm {} \;

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fix file permissions (e.g. after copy from usbdrive)
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find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;

example output:
drwxrwxr-x 2 chuck chuck 4096 2010-05-05 10:21 my_directory/
-rw-rw-r– 1 chuck chuck 300 2010-05-07 18:14 my_file.txt

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find all the .ini files in home directory but ignore hidden directories
(note: -print needed to print. not sure why. maybe because of the “or” (-o)
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find ~/ -type d -name “.” -prune -o -iname “.ini” -print

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find all .ico files on computer but ignore directories named “win7”, “share”, “doc”
(note: -print is important on this. see above)
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find / -type d ( -name win7 -o -name share -o -name doc ) -prune -o -iname “.ico” -print

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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> delete all files like 'my_music_file 1.m4a'<br /> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> find . -iname '* 1.m4a' -exec rm {} \;<br />

Linux/Unix CLI “find” examples. « Useless Posts from Tigard.