NAME
find - find files

SYNOPSIS
find pathname-list expression
find pattern

DESCRIPTION
In the first form above, find recursively descends the directory
hierarchy for each pathname in the pathname-list (i.e., one or more
pathnames) seeking files that match a boolean expression written in
the primaries given below. In the descriptions, the argument n is
used as a decimal integer where +n means more than n, -n means less
than n and n means exactly n.

The second form rapidly searches a database for all pathnames which
match pattern. Usually the database is recomputed weekly and
contains the pathnames of all files which are publicly accessible.
If escaped, normal shell "globbing" characters (‘*’, ‘?’, ‘[’, and
’]’) may be used in pattern, but the matching differs in that no
characters (e.g. ‘/’) have to be matched explicitly. As a special
case, a simple pattern containing no globbing characters is matched
as though it were *pattern*; if any globbing character appears
there are no implicit globbing characters.

The second form expects /usr/lib/find/find.codes to exist. You must
be root to create or update this database by running
/usr/lib/find/updatedb.

-name filename
True if the filename argument matches the current file
name. Normal shell argument syntax may be used if
escaped (watch out for ‘[’, ‘{’, ‘?’ and ‘*’).

-perm onum
True if the file permission flags exactly match the octal
number onum (see chmod(1)). If onum is prefixed by a
minus sign, more flag bits (017777, see stat(2)) become
significant and the flags are compared:
(flags&onum)==onum.

-type c True if the type of the file is c, where c is b, c, d, f,
l or s for block special file, character special file,
directory, plain file, symbolic link, or socket.

-links n True if the file has n links.

-user uname
True if the file belongs to the user uname (login name or
numeric user ID).

-nouser True if the file belongs to a user not in the /etc/passwd
database.

-group gname
True if the file belongs to group gname (group name or
numeric group ID).

-nogroup True if the file belongs to a group not in the /etc/group
database.

-size n True if the file is n blocks long (512 bytes per block).

-inum n True if the file has inode number n.

-atime n True if the file has been accessed in n days.

-mtime n True if the file has been modified in n days.

-exec command
True if the executed command returns a zero value as exit
status. The end of the command must be punctuated by an
escaped semicolon. A command argument ‘{}’ is replaced
by the current pathname.

-ok command
Like -exec except that the generated command is written
on the standard output, then the standard input is read
and the command executed only upon response y.

-print Always true; causes the current pathname to be printed.

-ls Always true; causes current pathname to be printed
together with its associated statistics. These include
(respectively) inode number, size in kilobytes (1024
bytes), protection mode, number of hard links, user,
group, size in bytes, and modification time. If the file
is a special file the size field will instead contain the
major and minor device numbers. If the file is a
symbolic link the pathname of the linked-to file is
printed preceded by "->". The format is identical to
that of "ls -gilds" (note however that formatting is
done internally, without executing the ls program).

-newer file
True if the current file has been modified more recently
than the argument file.

-cpio file
Write the current file on the argument file in cpio
format.

-xdev Always true; causes find not to traverse down into a file
system different from the one on which current argument
pathname resides.

The primaries may be combined using the following operators (in
order of decreasing precedence):

1) A parenthesized group of primaries and operators (parentheses
are special to the Shell and must be escaped).

2) The negation of a primary (‘!’ is the unary not operator).

3) Concatenation of primaries (the and operation is implied by the
juxtaposition of two primaries).

4) Alternation of primaries (‘-o’ is the or operator).

EXAMPLES
To find all accessible files whose pathname contains ‘find’:

find find

To typeset all variants of manual pages for ‘ls’:

vtroff -man ‘find ’*man*/ls.?’‘

To remove all files named ‘a.out’ or ‘*.o’ that have not been
accessed for a week:

find / -name a.out -o -name ’*.o’ -atime +7 -exec rm {} ;

To list all ‘.BAK’ and ‘.CKP’ files under the current directory:

find . -name ’{.,}*.{BAK,CKP}’ -print

FILES
/etc/passwd
/etc/group
/usr/lib/find/find.codes coded pathnames database