unix find usefull command

Following post is an attempt to list most used and interesting use of unix find command.

you might find all of tutorials about this command but I tired to list down the once I used in my day to day life.


General syntax:
find /path [expression]

find files under a directory ignoring case

find /usr -iname sample.txt

To find a directory in  "sample" folder.

find / -type d -name sample

find all files ending with .txt and print first 3 results

find . -name "*.txt" | head -n 3

find all files ending with ".java" or ".cpp"

find . -name "*.java" -o -name "*.cpp"

find all files with specific format extension which are modified in last 1 days.

to find all files modified in last 1 day with cpp extension.

find  . -name  "*.cpp" -mtime -1



Replace all occurrence of a string all occurrence in all files
find ./ -type f -exec sed -i 's/3094/3081/' {} \;


Find all files on the specific directory   not modified in 1 years (365days)

find /dummy -mount -mtime 365| head -n 5


Find path of file where a particular string  is found ,  in current directory

find . -name \* -exec grep "VISIBILITY_HIDDE" '{}' \; -print

Find path of strings in .cpp files

find / -name \*.cpp -exec grep "debug" '{}' \; -print


Run strings on every file on the system that ends with ".pwd" (case insensitive)

find / -iname "*.pwd" | xargs strings $1 | sort

Limit depth of directory traversal

 find .  -maxdepth 2 -name "*.txt"

it limits the depth of the command.

FIND AND XARGS command

find / -print | xargs ls -ld

Xargs executes its arguments as commands, and reads standard input to specify arguments to that command

Delete the first file ending in ".swp" or "~" that have not been modified in 24 days starting in this directory.

find . -mount -mtime +24 \( -name "*.swp" -o -name "*~" \) | head -n 1 | xargs rm $1

List all empty direcories:

find /tmp -type d -empty 

find all empty directories and remove them in a specific directory.

find /tmp -type d -empty -exec rmdir  {} \;

Rarely used but interesting commands:

To find list of files that got changed with last 1 day. 

find / -mtime -1

Reference: http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~cs556/projects/project-1/Exercise.html