guides/sysutils/sysutils_find.md

Find and print the filenames of a specific filename pattern

$ find . -name '*.*' -print

Find and print the filenames of a minimun specific size

$ find . -size +10000k -print

Finding all files containing a text string on Linux

$ grep -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e "pattern"

-r or -R is recursive, -n is line number, and -w stands match the whole word. -l (lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files.

Finding a File Containing a Particular Text String In Linux

$ grep "text string to search” directory-path

This will print the lines in the files where the text appears but does not print the file name

$ find . -name '*.js' -exec grep -i 'string to search for' {} \; -print

Show only directories recursively

$ find "$PWD" -type d -print | sort
$ find -s "$PWD" -type d -print

Find and delete all files recursively

$ find . -type f -name '*.db' -exec rm {} +

Count all files in current directory recursivelly

$ find . -type f | wc -l

Copy all files with a certain extension from all subdirectories to newDir

$ find . -name \*.xls -exec cp {} newDir \;
$ find . -name '*.txt' -exec cp {} /home/user/directory/ \;

Extract all files recursively.txt

$ find . -name "*.zip" | while read filename; do unzip -o -d "`basename -s .zip "$filename"`" "$filename"; done;

Find and sort files by date recursively

$ find ~/games/doom/wads/doom2/*/*/{*.wad,*.pk3} -printf "%T@ %Tc %p\n" | sort -rn | awk '{print $9}'
$ find ~/games/doom/wads/doom2/boom/*/{*.wad,*.pk3} -printf "%T@ %Tc %p\n" | sort -rn | awk '{print $9}'
$ find ~/games/quake/*/maps/{*.bsp,*.pak} ~/games/quake/*/{*.bsp,*.pak} -printf "%T@ %Tc %p\n" | sort -rn | awk '{print $9}'

Find and sort files by date recursively (OpenBSD)

$ find ~/games/doom/wads/doom2/*/*/{*.wad,*.pk3} -ls | sort -rn | awk '{print $11}'
$ find ~/games/doom/mods/zdoom/*/{*.wad,*.pk3} -ls | sort -rn | awk '{print $11}'
$ find ~/games/quake/*/maps/{*.bsp,*.pak} ~/games/quake/*/{*.bsp,*.pak} -ls | sort -rn | awk '{print $11}'

Remove all id3 tags from music files

$ find . -name "*.flac" -exec id3v2 --delete-all {} +

find a random file in directory

$ find ~/pictures/wallpapers/*.* -type f | shuf -n 1

Non GNU find

Find and sort files by date recursively

$ find ~/games/doom/wads/doom2/*/*/{*.wad,*.pk3} -type f -exec stat -f "%m %N" "{}" \; | sort -nr | awk '{print $2}'
$ find ~/games/quake/*/{maps/*.bsp,pak0.pak} -type f -exec stat -f "%m %N" "{}" \; | sort -nr | awk '{print $2}'