Find

Find allows you to find files, e.g.

find by name

To find a file in your current folder and its subfolders, even if they are symbolic links, use the command

find -L -iname "*foo*"

This command will find all files containing foo in their filename ignoring case sensitivity.

find by time

find files older than...

To find files in folder that have been changed more than 1 day ago use

find folder -ctime 1

To find out how old a file is, use the command stat.

find files newer than...

To find files in folder that have been changed less than 1 day ago use

find folder -ctime -1

To find out how old a file is, use the command stat.

find files that have content

find -not -empty -iname "foo*"

find files by content

To find files by content you do not use find, but grep.

Do something with the file

find . -name '*.mp3' -exec echo "Do something with the file" {} \;

See also

• find's man page
• locate's man page
• whereis' man page
• which's man page