Mastering Linux Find: Essential Tips and Advanced Usage

Here are basic examples of the find command that I use frequently; after the examples you can read a theoretical explanation translated from the find man page with my own understanding, followed by deeper usage examples and analysis.

(1) Basic printing

The default action of -print prints each found file followed by a newline ( \n). Use -print0 to separate entries with a null byte ( \0) to avoid issues with spaces in filenames. Note that -print0 replaces \n with \0, and you may need external tools like xargs or tr to handle the null delimiters.

$ mkdir /tmp/a
$ touch /tmp/a/{1..5}.log
$ find /tmp/a   # equivalent to find /tmp/a -print
/tmp/a
/tmp/a/4.log
/tmp/a/2.log
/tmp/a/5.log
/tmp/a/1.log
/tmp/a/3.log

$ find /tmp/a -print0
/tmp/a/tmp/a/4.log/tmp/a/2.log/tmp/a/5.log/tmp/a/1.log/tmp/a/3.log

(2) Filename search

Common options are -name (matches the basename) and -path (matches the directory name plus basename). Enclose patterns in quotes and combine with wildcards.

$ find /tmp -name "*.log"
/tmp/screen.log
/tmp/x.log
/tmp/timing.log
/tmp/a/4.log
...

Use -path when you need to match a directory component, e.g.:

$ find /tmp -path '*a*/*.log'
/tmp/abc/axyz.log

Remember that character classes such as [a-z] match single characters; ranges like [1-20] are interpreted as [1-2] plus the character 0.

(3) Search by file type: -type

Typical types are regular files ( f), directories ( d), and symbolic links ( l).

$ find /tmp -type f -name "a*.sh"

$ find /tmp -type d -name "a*"

(4) Search by timestamps

Use -atime, -mtime, or -ctime. Example: find shell scripts modified within the last three days.

$ find /tmp -type f -mtime -3 -name "*.sh"

(5) Search by size

Find files larger than 100 KB:

$ find /tmp -type f -size +100k -name '*.sh'

(6) Search by permissions

Find shell scripts where the owner has read, write, and execute permissions:

$ find /tmp -type f -perm -0700 -name '*.sh'

(7) Find empty files or directories

$ find /tmp -type d -empty

(8) Delete found files

$ find /tmp -type f -name "*.tmp" -exec rm -rf '{}' \;

(9) Search within a date range

$ find /test -type f -newermt 2017-06-03 -a ! -newermt 2017-06-06

Alternatively, create two reference files with touch -m -d and use -newer.

(10) Parallel search acceleration

Use xargs -P 0 to run multiple find processes in parallel, for example to locate all files ending with “Find.pm” from the root.

ls --hide proc / | xargs -i -P 0 find /{} -type f -name "*Find.pm"

(11) Get absolute paths

When the search path is relative, prepend $(pwd), use the $PWD variable, or invoke readlink -f via -exec to obtain full paths.

(12) Extract basename with -printf

The -printf format %f prints the basename, while %P prints the path relative to the search directory.

$ find /tmp/test -printf "%f
"

(13) Exclude the search directory itself

Combine -path with a negation to omit the starting directory from results.

$ find /tmp/test ! -path /tmp/test