path: root/find/find.1

'\" t
.TH FIND 1 \" -*- nroff -*-
.SH NAME
find \- search for files in a directory hierarchy
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B find
[\-H] [\-L] [\-P] [\-D debugopts] [\-Olevel] [starting-point...\&] [expression]
.
.SH DESCRIPTION
This manual page
documents the GNU version of
.BR find .
GNU
.B find
searches the directory tree rooted at each given starting-point by
evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the
rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is
known (the left hand side is false for \fIand\fR operations, true for
.IR or ),
at which point
.B find
moves on to the next file name.  If no starting-point is specified,
`.\&' is assumed.
.PP
If you are using
.B find
in an environment where security is important (for example if you are
using it to search directories that are writable by other users), you
should read the `Security Considerations' chapter of the findutils
documentation, which is called \fBFinding Files\fP and comes with
findutils.
That document also includes a lot more detail
and discussion than this manual page, so you may find it a more useful
source of information.
.
.SH OPTIONS
The
.BR \-H ,
.B \-L
and
.B \-P
options control the treatment of symbolic
links.  Command-line arguments following these are taken to be names
of files or directories to be examined, up to the first argument that
begins with `\-', or the argument `(' or `!'.  That argument and any
following arguments are taken to be the expression describing what is
to be searched for.  If no paths are given, the current directory is
used.  If no expression is given, the expression
.B \-print
is used
(but you should probably consider using
.B \-print0
instead, anyway).
.PP
This manual page talks about `options' within the expression list.
These options control the behaviour of
.B find
but are specified immediately after the last path name.  The five
`real' options
.BR \-H ,
.BR \-L ,
.BR \-P ,
.B  \-D
and
.B  \-O
must appear before
the first path name, if at all.  A double dash
.B \-\-
could theoretically be used to signal that any remaining arguments
are not options, but this does not really work due to the way
.B find
determines the end of the following path arguments: it does that by reading
until an expression argument comes (which also starts with a `-').
Now, if a path argument would start with a `-', then
.B find
would treat it as expression argument instead.
Thus, to ensure that all start points are taken as such, and especially to
prevent that wildcard patterns expanded by the calling shell are not mistakenly
treated as expression arguments, it is generally safer to prefix wildcards or
dubious path names with either `./' or to use absolute path names starting
with '/'.
Alternatively, it is generally safe though non-portable to use the GNU option
.B \-files0\-from
to pass arbitrary starting points to
.BR find .

.IP \-P
Never follow symbolic links.  This is the default behaviour.  When
.B find
examines or prints information about files, and the file is a symbolic
link, the information used shall be taken from the properties of the
symbolic link itself.

.IP \-L
Follow symbolic links.  When
.B find
examines or prints information about files, the information used shall
be taken from the properties of the file to which the link points, not
from the link itself (unless it is a broken symbolic link or
.B find
is unable to examine the file to which the link points).  Use of this
option implies
.BR \-noleaf .
If you later use the
.B \-P
option,
.B \-noleaf
will still be in effect.  If
.B \-L
is in effect and
.B find
discovers a symbolic link to a subdirectory during its search,
the subdirectory pointed to by the symbolic link will be searched.
.IP
When the
.B \-L
option is in effect, the
.B \-type
predicate will always
match against the type of the file that a symbolic link points to
rather than the link itself (unless the symbolic link is broken).
Actions that can cause symbolic links to become broken while
.B find
is executing (for example
.BR \-delete )
can give rise to confusing behaviour.
Using
.B \-L
causes the
.B \-lname
and
.B \-ilname
predicates always to return
false.

.IP \-H
Do not follow symbolic links, except while processing the command
line arguments.  When
.B find
examines or prints information about files, the information used
shall be taken from the properties of the symbolic link itself.
The only exception to this behaviour is when a file specified on the
command line is a symbolic link,
and the link can be resolved.
For that situation, the information used is taken from whatever the
link points to
(that is, the link is followed).
The information about the link itself is used as a fallback if the
file pointed to by the symbolic link cannot be examined.
If
.B \-H
is in effect and one of the
paths specified on the command line is a symbolic link to a directory,
the contents of that directory will be examined (though of course
.B \-maxdepth\ 0
would prevent this).
.P
If more than one of
.BR \-H ,
.B \-L
and
.B \-P
is specified, each overrides the
others; the last one appearing on the command line takes effect.
Since it is the default, the
.B \-P
option should be considered to be in
effect unless either
.B \-H
or
.B \-L
is specified.

GNU
.B find
frequently stats files during the processing of the command line
itself, before any searching has begun.  These options also affect how
those arguments are processed.  Specifically, there are a number of
tests that compare files listed on the command line against a file we
are currently considering.  In each case, the file specified on the
command line will have been examined and some of its properties will
have been saved.  If the named file is in fact a symbolic link, and
the
.B \-P
option is in effect (or if neither
.B \-H
nor
.B \-L
were specified), the information used for the comparison will be taken from
the properties of the symbolic link.  Otherwise, it will be taken from
the properties of the file the link points to.  If
.B find
cannot follow the link (for example because it has insufficient
privileges or the link points to a nonexistent file) the properties of
the link itself will be used.
.P
When the
.B \-H
or
.B \-L
options are in effect, any symbolic links listed as the argument of
.B \-newer
will be dereferenced, and the timestamp
will be taken from the file to which the symbolic link points.  The
same consideration applies to
.BR \-newerXY ,
.B \-anewer
and
.BR \-cnewer .

The
.B \-follow
option has a similar effect to
.BR \-L ,
though it takes
effect at the point where it appears (that is, if
.B \-L
is not used but
.B \-follow
is, any symbolic links appearing after
.B \-follow
on the
command line will be dereferenced, and those before it will not).

.IP "\-D debugopts"
Print diagnostic information; this can be helpful to diagnose problems
with why
.B find
is not doing what you want.  The list of debug options should be comma
separated.  Compatibility of the debug options is not guaranteed
between releases of findutils.  For a complete list of valid debug
options, see the output of
.BR "find \-D\ help" .
Valid debug options include
.RS
.IP exec
Show diagnostic information relating to \-exec, \-execdir, \-ok and \-okdir
.IP opt
Prints diagnostic information relating to the optimisation of the
expression tree; see the \-O option.
.IP rates
Prints a summary indicating how often each predicate succeeded or
failed.
.IP search
Navigate the directory tree verbosely.
.IP stat
Print messages as files are examined with the
.B stat
and
.B lstat
system calls.  The
.B find
program tries to minimise such calls.
.IP tree
Show the expression tree in its original and optimised form.
.IP all
Enable all of the other debug options (but
.BR help ).
.IP help
Explain the debugging options.
.RE
.IP \-Olevel
Enables query optimisation.
The
.B find
program reorders tests to speed up execution while preserving the
overall effect; that is, predicates with side effects are not
reordered relative to each other.  The optimisations performed at each
optimisation level are as follows.
.RS
.IP 0
Equivalent to optimisation level 1.
.IP 1
This is the default optimisation level and corresponds to the
traditional behaviour.  Expressions are reordered so that tests based
only on the names of files (for example
.B \-name
and
.BR \-regex )
are performed first.
.IP 2
Any
.B \-type
or
.B \-xtype
tests are performed after any tests based only on the names of files,
but before any tests that require information from the inode.  On many
modern versions of Unix, file types are returned by
.B readdir()
and so these predicates are faster to evaluate than predicates which
need to stat the file first.
If you use the
.B "\-fstype\ \fIFOO\fR"
predicate and specify a filesystem type
.I FOO
which is not known (that is, present in `/etc/mtab') at the time
.B find
starts, that predicate is equivalent to
.BR \-false .
.IP 3
At this optimisation level, the full cost-based query optimiser is
enabled.  The order of tests is modified so that cheap (i.e.\& fast)
tests are performed first and more expensive ones are performed later,
if necessary.  Within each cost band, predicates are evaluated earlier
or later according to whether they are likely to succeed or not.  For
.BR \-o ,
predicates which are likely to succeed are evaluated earlier, and for
.BR \-a ,
predicates which are likely to fail are evaluated earlier.
.RE
.IP
The cost-based optimiser has a fixed idea of how likely any given test
is to succeed.  In some cases the probability takes account of the
specific nature of the test (for example,
.B \-type\ f
is assumed to be more likely to succeed than
.BR "\-type\ c" ).
The cost-based optimiser is currently being evaluated.
If it does not actually improve the performance of
.BR find ,
it will be removed again.  Conversely, optimisations that prove to be
reliable, robust and effective may be enabled at lower optimisation
levels over time.  However, the default behaviour (i.e.\& optimisation
level 1) will not be changed in the 4.3.x release series.  The
findutils test suite runs all the tests on
.B find
at each optimisation level and ensures that the result is the same.
.
.SH EXPRESSION
The part of the command line after the list of starting points is the
.IR expression .
This is a kind of query specification describing how we match files
and what we do with the files that were matched.
An expression is composed of a sequence of things:

.IP Tests
Tests return a true or false value, usually on the basis of some
property of a file we are considering.  The
.B \-empty
test for example is true only when the current file is empty.

.IP Actions
Actions have side effects (such as printing something on the standard
output) and return either true or false, usually based on whether or
not they are successful.  The
.B \-print
action for example prints the name of the current file on the standard
output.

.IP "Global options"
Global options affect the operation of tests and actions specified on
any part of the command line.  Global options always return true.  The
.B \-depth
option for example makes
.B find
traverse the file system in a depth-first order.

.IP "Positional options"
Positional options affect only tests or actions which follow them.
Positional options always return true.  The
.B \-regextype
option for example is positional, specifying the regular expression
dialect for regular expressions occurring later on the command line.

.IP Operators
Operators join together the other items within the expression.  They
include for example
.B \-o
(meaning logical OR) and
.B \-a
(meaning logical AND).  Where an operator is missing,
.B \-a
is assumed.

.P
The
.B \-print
action is performed on all files for which the whole expression is
true, unless it contains an action other than
.B \-prune
or
.BR \-quit .
Actions which inhibit the default
.B \-print
are
.BR \-delete ,
.BR \-exec ,
.BR \-execdir ,
.BR \-ok ,
.BR \-okdir ,
.BR \-fls ,
.BR \-fprint ,
.BR \-fprintf ,
.BR \-ls ,
.B \-print
and
.BR \-printf .


The
.B \-delete
action also acts like an option (since it implies
.BR \-depth ).

.SS POSITIONAL OPTIONS
Positional options always return true.  They affect only tests occurring
later on the command line.

.IP \-daystart
Measure times (for
.BR \-amin ,
.BR \-atime ,
.BR \-cmin ,
.BR \-ctime ,
.BR \-mmin ,
and
.BR \-mtime )
from the beginning of today rather than from 24 hours ago.  This
option only affects tests which appear later on the command line.

.IP \-follow
Deprecated; use the
.B \-L
option instead.  Dereference symbolic links.
Implies
.BR \-noleaf .
The
.B \-follow
option affects only those tests which
appear after it on the command line.  Unless the
.B \-H
or
.B \-L
option has
been specified, the position of the
.B \-follow
option changes the behaviour of the
.B \-newer
predicate; any files listed as the argument
of
.B \-newer
will be dereferenced if they are symbolic links.  The same
consideration applies to
.BR \-newerXY ,
.B \-anewer
and
.BR \-cnewer .
Similarly, the
.B \-type
predicate will always match against the type of the file
that a symbolic link points to rather than the link itself.  Using
.B \-follow
causes the
.B \-lname and
.B \-ilname
predicates always to return false.

.IP "\-regextype \fItype\fR"
Changes the regular expression syntax understood by
.B \-regex
and
.B \-iregex
tests which occur later on the command line.  To see which regular
expression types are known, use
.BR "\-regextype\ help" .
The Texinfo documentation (see
.B SEE
.BR ALSO )
explains the meaning of and
differences between the various types of regular expression.

.IP "\-warn, \-nowarn"
Turn warning messages on or off.  These warnings apply only to the
command line usage, not to any conditions that
.B find
might encounter when it searches directories.  The default behaviour
corresponds to
.B \-warn
if standard input is a tty, and to
.B \-nowarn
otherwise.  If a warning message relating to command-line usage is
produced, the exit status of
.B find
is not affected.  If the
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
environment variable is set, and
.B \-warn
is also used, it is not specified which, if any, warnings will be active.

.SS GLOBAL OPTIONS
Global options always return true.
Global options take effect even for tests which occur earlier on the
command line.  To prevent confusion, global options should specified
on the command-line after the list of start points, just before the
first test, positional option or action.
If you specify a global option in some other place,
.B find
will issue a warning message explaining that this can be confusing.

The global options occur after the list of start points, and so are
not the same kind of option as
.BR \-L ,
for example.

.IP \-d
A synonym for \-depth, for compatibility with FreeBSD, NetBSD, \
MacOS X and OpenBSD.

.IP \-depth
Process each directory's contents before the directory itself.  The
\-delete action also implies
.BR \-depth .

.IP "\-files0\-from \fIfile\fR"
Read the starting points from \fIfile\fR instead of getting them on the
command line.
In contrast to the known limitations of passing starting points via arguments
on the command line, namely the limitation of the amount of file names,
and the inherent ambiguity of file names clashing with option names,
using this option allows to safely pass an arbitrary number of starting points
to \fBfind\fR.

Using this option and passing starting points on the command line is mutually
exclusive, and is therefore not allowed at the same time.

The \fIfile\fR argument is mandatory.
One can use
.B \-files0\-from\ \-
to read the list of starting points from the \fIstandard input\fR stream,
and e.g. from a pipe.
In this case, the actions
.B \-ok
and
.B \-okdir
are not allowed, because they would obviously interfere with reading from
\fIstandard input\fR in order to get a user confirmation.

The starting points in \fIfile\fR have to be separated by ASCII NUL characters.
Two consecutive NUL characters, i.e., a starting point with a Zero-length
file name is not allowed and will lead to an error diagnostic followed by
a non-Zero exit code later.

In the case the given \fIfile\fR is empty, \fBfind\fR does not process any
starting point and therefore will exit immediately after parsing the program
arguments.
This is unlike the standard invocation where \fBfind\fR assumes the current
directory as starting point if no path argument is passed.

The processing of the starting points is otherwise as usual, e.g.
.B find
will recurse into subdirectories unless otherwise prevented.
To process only the starting points, one can additionally pass
.BR \-maxdepth\ 0 .

Further notes:
if a file is listed more than once in the input file, it is unspecified
whether it is visited more than once.
If the \fIfile\fR is mutated during the operation of
.BR find ,
the result is unspecified as well.
Finally, the seek position within the named \fIfile\fR at the time
.B find
exits, be it with
.B \-quit
or in any other way, is also unspecified.
By "unspecified" here is meant that it may or may not work or do any specific
thing, and that the behavior may change from platform to platform, or from
.B findutils
release to release.

.IP "\-help, \-\-help"
Print a summary of the command-line usage of
.B find
and exit.

.IP \-ignore_readdir_race
Normally, \fBfind\fR will emit an error message when it fails to stat a file.
If you give this option and a file is deleted between the time \fBfind\fR
reads the name of the file from the directory and the time it tries to stat
the file, no error message will be issued.
This also applies to files or directories whose names are given on the
command line.
This option takes effect at the time the command line is read,
which means that you cannot search one part of the filesystem with
this option on and part of it with this option off
(if you need to do that, you will need to issue two \fBfind\fR commands
instead, one with the option and one without it).

Furthermore,
.B find
with the
.B \-ignore_readdir_race
option will ignore errors of the
.B \-delete
action in the case the file has disappeared since the parent directory was read:
it will not output an error diagnostic, and the return code of the
.B \-delete
action will be true.

.IP "\-maxdepth \fIlevels\fR"
Descend at most \fIlevels\fR (a non-negative integer) levels of
directories below the starting-points.  Using
.B \-maxdepth\ 0
means only apply the tests and actions to the starting-points themselves.

.IP "\-mindepth \fIlevels\fR"
Do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than \fIlevels\fR (a
non-negative integer).  Using
.B \-mindepth\ 1
means process all files except the starting-points.

.IP \-mount
Don't descend directories on other filesystems.  An alternate name for
.BR \-xdev ,
for compatibility with some other versions of
.BR find .

.IP \-noignore_readdir_race
Turns off the effect of
.BR \-ignore_readdir_race .

.IP "\-noleaf"
Do not optimize by assuming that directories contain 2 fewer
subdirectories than their hard link count.  This option is needed when
searching filesystems that do not follow the Unix directory-link
convention, such as CD-ROM or MS-DOS filesystems or AFS volume mount
points.  Each directory on a normal Unix filesystem has at least 2
hard links: its name and its `.\&' entry.  Additionally, its
subdirectories (if any) each have a `..\&' entry linked to that
directory.  When
.B find
is examining a directory, after it has statted 2 fewer subdirectories
than the directory's link count, it knows that the rest of the entries
in the directory are non-directories (`leaf' files in the directory
tree).  If only the files' names need to be examined, there is no need
to stat them; this gives a significant increase in search speed.

.IP "\-version, \-\-version"
Print the \fBfind\fR version number and exit.

.IP \-xdev
Don't descend directories on other filesystems.

.SS TESTS
Some tests, for example
.B \-newerXY
and
.BR \-samefile ,
allow comparison between the file currently being examined and some
reference file specified on the command line.  When these tests are
used, the interpretation of the reference file is determined by the
options
.BR \-H ,
.B \-L
and
.B \-P
and any previous
.BR \-follow ,
but the reference file is only examined once, at the time the command
line is parsed.  If the reference file cannot be examined (for
example, the
.BR stat (2)
system call fails for it), an error message is issued, and
.B find
exits with a nonzero status.
.P
A numeric argument \fIn\fR can be specified to tests (like
.BR \-amin ,
.BR \-mtime ,
.BR \-gid ,
.BR \-inum ,
.BR \-links ,
.BR \-size ,
.BR \-uid
and
.BR \-used )
as
.IP \fI+n\fP
for greater than
.IR n ,
.IP \fI\-n\fP
for less than
.IR n ,
.IP \fIn\fP
for exactly
.IR n .
.
.P
Supported tests:

.IP "\-amin \fIn\fR"
File was last accessed less than, more than or exactly \fIn\fR minutes ago.

.IP "\-anewer \fIreference\fR"
Time of the last access of the current file is more recent than that
of the last data modification of the \fIreference\fR file.
If \fIreference\fR is a symbolic link and the
.B \-H
option or the
.B \-L
option is in effect, then the time of the last data modification of the file
it points to is always used.

.IP "\-atime \fIn\fR"
File was last accessed less than, more than or exactly
.IR n *24
hours ago.
When find figures out how many 24-hour periods ago the file
was last accessed, any fractional part is ignored, so to match
.BR "\-atime\ +1" ,
a file has to have been accessed at least
.I two
days ago.

.IP "\-cmin \fIn\fR"
File's status was last changed less than, more than or exactly \fIn\fR minutes
ago.

.IP "\-cnewer \fIreference\fR"
Time of the last status change of the current file is more recent than that
of the last data modification of the \fIreference\fR file.
If \fIreference\fR is a symbolic link and the
.B \-H
option or the
.B \-L
option is in effect, then the time of the last data modification of the file
it points to is always used.

.IP "\-ctime \fIn\fR"
File's status was last changed less than, more than or exactly
.IR n *24
hours ago.
See the comments for
.B \-atime
to understand how rounding affects the interpretation of file status
change times.

.IP \-empty
File is empty and is either a regular file or a directory.

.IP \-executable
Matches files which are executable and directories which are
searchable (in a file name resolution sense) by the current user.
This takes into account access control lists and other permissions
artefacts which the
.B \-perm
test ignores.  This test makes use of the
.BR access (2)
system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do UID
mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement
.BR access (2)
in the client's kernel and so cannot make use of the UID mapping
information held on the server.  Because this test is based only on
the result of the
.BR access (2)
system call, there is no guarantee that a file for which this test
succeeds can actually be executed.

.IP \-false
Always false.

.IP "\-fstype \fItype\fR"
File is on a filesystem of type
.IR type .
The valid filesystem types vary among different versions of Unix;
an incomplete list of
filesystem types that are accepted on some version of Unix or another
is: ufs, 4.2, 4.3, nfs, tmp, mfs, S51K, S52K.  You can use
.B \-printf
with the %F directive to see the types of your filesystems.

.IP "\-gid \fIn\fR"
File's numeric group ID is less than, more than or exactly
.IR n .

.IP "\-group \fIgname\fR"
File belongs to group \fIgname\fR (numeric group ID allowed).

.IP "\-ilname \fIpattern\fR"
Like
.BR \-lname ,
but the match is case insensitive.
If the
.B \-L
option or the
.B \-follow
option is in effect, this test returns false unless the symbolic link
is broken.


.IP "\-iname \fIpattern\fR"
Like
.BR \-name ,
but the match is case insensitive.  For example, the
patterns `fo*' and `F??' match the file names `Foo', `FOO', `foo',
`fOo', etc.
The pattern `*foo*` will also match a file called '.foobar'.

.IP "\-inum \fIn\fR"
File has inode number smaller than, greater than or exactly
.IR n .
It is normally easier to use the
.B \-samefile
test instead.

.IP "\-ipath \fIpattern\fR"
Like
.BR \-path .
but the match is case insensitive.

.IP "\-iregex \fIpattern\fR"
Like
.BR \-regex ,
but the match is case insensitive.

.IP "\-iwholename \fIpattern\fR"
See \-ipath.  This alternative is less portable than
.BR \-ipath .

.IP "\-links \fIn\fR"
File has less than, more than or exactly \fIn\fR hard links.

.IP "\-lname \fIpattern\fR"
File is a symbolic link whose contents match shell pattern
.IR pattern .
The metacharacters do not treat `/' or `.\&' specially.
If the
.B \-L
option or the
.B \-follow
option is in effect, this test returns false unless the symbolic link
is broken.

.IP "\-mmin \fIn\fR"
File's data was last modified less than, more than or exactly \fIn\fR minutes
ago.

.IP "\-mtime \fIn\fR"
File's data was last modified less than, more than or exactly
.IR n *24
hours ago.
See the comments for
.B \-atime
to understand how rounding affects the interpretation of file
modification times.

.IP "\-name \fIpattern\fR"
Base of file name (the path with the leading directories removed)
matches shell pattern
.IR pattern .
Because the leading directories are removed,
the file names considered for a match with
.B \-name
will never include a slash, so `\-name a/b' will never match anything
(you probably need to use
.B \-path
instead).
A warning is issued if you try to do this,
unless the environment variable
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
is set.
The metacharacters (`*', `?',
and `[]') match a `.\&' at the start of the base name (this is a change
in findutils-4.2.2; see section STANDARDS CONFORMANCE below).  To ignore a
directory and the files under it, use
.B \-prune
rather than checking every file in the tree;
see an example in the description of that action.
Braces are not recognised as being
special, despite the fact that some shells including Bash imbue braces
with a special meaning in shell patterns.  The filename matching is
performed with the use of the
.BR fnmatch (3)
library function.
Don't forget to enclose the pattern in quotes in order to protect it
from expansion by the shell.

.IP "\-newer \fIreference\fR"
Time of the last data modification of the current file is more recent than that
of the last data modification of the \fIreference\fR file.
If \fIreference\fR is a symbolic link and the
.B \-H
option or the
.B \-L
option is in effect, then the time of the last data modification of the file
it points to is always used.

.IP "\-newerXY \fIreference\fR"
Succeeds if timestamp \fIX\fR of the file being considered is newer
than timestamp \fIY\fR of the file
.IR reference .
The letters \fIX\fR and \fIY\fR can be any of the following letters:

.TS
ll
ll
ll
ll
llw(2i).
a	The access time of the file \fIreference\fR
B	The birth time of the file \fIreference\fR
c	The inode status change time of \fIreference\fR
m	The modification time of the file \fIreference\fR
t	\fIreference\fR is interpreted directly as a time
.TE

Some combinations are invalid; for example, it is invalid for
.I X
to be
.IR t .
Some combinations are not implemented on all systems; for example
.I B
is not supported on all systems.  If an invalid or unsupported
combination of
.I XY
is specified, a fatal error results.  Time specifications are
interpreted as for the argument to the
.B \-d
option of GNU
.BR date .
If you try to use the birth time of a reference file, and the birth
time cannot be determined, a fatal error message results.  If you
specify a test which refers to the birth time of files being examined,
this test will fail for any files where the birth time is unknown.

.IP \-nogroup
No group corresponds to file's numeric group ID.

.IP \-nouser
No user corresponds to file's numeric user ID.

.IP "\-path \fIpattern\fR"
File name matches shell pattern
.IR pattern .
The metacharacters do not treat `/' or `.\&' specially;
so, for example,
.in +4m
.nf
find . \-path \(dq./sr*sc\(dq
.fi
.in
will print an entry for a directory called
.I ./src/misc
(if one exists).  To ignore a whole directory tree, use
.B \-prune
rather than
checking every file in the tree.
Note that the pattern match test applies to the whole file name,
starting from one of the start points named on the command line.  It
would only make sense to use an absolute path name here if the
relevant start point is also an absolute path.  This means that this
command will never match anything:
.br
.in +4m
.nf
find bar \-path /foo/bar/myfile \-print
.fi
.in
Find compares the
.B \-path
argument with the concatenation of a directory name and the base name
of the file it's examining.  Since the concatenation will never end
with a slash,
.B \-path
arguments ending in a slash will match nothing (except perhaps a start
point specified on the command line).
The predicate
.B \-path
is also supported by HP-UX
.B find
and is part of the POSIX 2008 standard.

.IP "\-perm \fImode\fR"
File's permission bits are exactly \fImode\fR (octal or symbolic).
Since an exact match is required, if you want to use this form for
symbolic modes, you may have to specify a rather complex mode string.
For example `\-perm g=w' will only match files which have mode 0020
(that is, ones for which group write permission is the only permission
set).  It is more likely that you will want to use the `/' or `\-'
forms, for example `\-perm \-g=w', which matches any file with group
write permission.  See the
.B EXAMPLES
section for some illustrative examples.

.IP "\-perm \-\fImode\fR"
All of the permission bits \fImode\fR are set for the file.
Symbolic modes are accepted in this form, and this is usually the way
in which you would want to use them.  You must specify `u', `g' or `o' if
you use a symbolic mode.
See the
.B EXAMPLES
section for some illustrative examples.

.IP "\-perm /\fImode\fR"
Any of the permission bits \fImode\fR are set for the file.  Symbolic
modes are accepted in this form.  You must specify `u', `g' or `o' if
you use a symbolic mode.  See the
.B EXAMPLES
section for some illustrative examples.  If no permission bits in
.I mode
are set, this test matches any file (the idea here is to be consistent
with the behaviour of
.BR "\-perm\ \-000" ).

.IP "\-perm +\fImode\fR"
This is no longer supported (and has been deprecated since 2005).  Use
.B "\-perm /\fImode\fR"
instead.

.IP \-readable
Matches files which are readable by the current user.  This takes into
account access control lists and other permissions artefacts which the
.B \-perm
test ignores.  This test makes use of the
.BR access (2)
system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do UID
mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement
.BR access (2)
in the client's kernel and so cannot make use of the UID mapping
information held on the server.

.IP "\-regex \fIpattern\fR"
File name matches regular expression
.IR pattern .
This is a match on the whole path, not a search.
For example, to match a file named
.IR ./fubar3,
you can use the regular expression `.*bar.\&' or `.*b.*3',
but not `f.*r3'.
The regular expressions understood by
.B find
are by default Emacs Regular Expressions (except that `.' matches
newline), but this can be changed with the
.B \-regextype
option.

.IP "\-samefile \fIname\fR"
File refers to the same inode as
.IR name .
When
.B \-L
is in effect, this can include symbolic links.

.IP "\-size \fIn\fR[cwbkMG]"
File uses less than, more than or exactly \fIn\fP units of space, rounding up.
The following suffixes can be used:
.RS
.IP `b'
for 512-byte blocks (this is the default if no suffix is used)
.IP `c'
for bytes
.IP `w'
for two-byte words
.IP `k'
for kibibytes (KiB, units of 1024 bytes)
.IP `M'
for mebibytes (MiB, units of 1024 * 1024 = 1\|048\|576 bytes)
.IP `G'
for gibibytes (GiB, units of 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 1\|073\|741\|824 bytes)
.RE
.IP
The size is simply the st_size member of the struct stat populated by
the lstat (or stat) system call, rounded up as shown above.
In other words, it's consistent with the result you get for
.BR "ls\ \-l" .
Bear in
mind that the `%k' and `%b' format specifiers of
.B \-printf
handle sparse files
differently.  The `b' suffix always denotes 512-byte blocks and never
1024-byte blocks, which is different to the behaviour of
.BR \-ls .
.IP
The + and - prefixes signify greater than and less than, as usual;
i.e., an exact size of \fIn\fR units does not match.
Bear in mind that the size is rounded up to the next unit.
Therefore
.B \-size\ \-1M
is not equivalent to
.BR "\-size\ \-1\|048\|576c" .
The former only matches empty files, the latter matches files from 0 to
1,048,575 bytes.
.IP \-true
Always true.

.IP "\-type \fIc\fR"
File is of type
.IR c :
.RS
.IP b
block (buffered) special
.IP c
character (unbuffered) special
.IP d
directory
.IP p
named pipe (FIFO)
.IP f
regular file
.IP l
symbolic link; this is never true if the
.B \-L
option or the
.B \-follow
option is in effect, unless the symbolic link is broken.  If you want
to search for symbolic links when
.B \-L
is in effect, use
.BR \-xtype .
.IP s
socket
.IP D
door (Solaris)
.RE
.IP
To search for more than one type at once, you can supply the combined list of
type letters separated by a comma `,' (GNU extension).
.IP "\-uid \fIn\fR"
File's numeric user ID is less than, more than or exactly
.IR n .

.IP "\-used \fIn\fR"
File was last accessed less than, more than or exactly \fIn\fR days after its
status was last changed.

.IP "\-user \fIuname\fR"
File is owned by user \fIuname\fR (numeric user ID allowed).

.IP "\-wholename \fIpattern\fR"
See \-path.  This alternative is less portable than
.BR \-path .

.IP "\-writable"
Matches files which are writable by the current user.  This takes into
account access control lists and other permissions artefacts which the
.B \-perm
test ignores.  This test makes use of the
.BR access (2)
system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do UID
mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement
.BR access (2)
in the client's kernel and so cannot make use of the UID mapping
information held on the server.

.IP "\-xtype \fIc\fR"
The same as
.B \-type
unless the file is a symbolic link.  For symbolic
links: if the
.B \-H
or
.B \-P
option was specified, true if the file is a
link to a file of type
.IR c ;
if the
.B \-L
option has been given, true
if \fIc\fR is `l'.  In other words, for symbolic links,
.B \-xtype
checks the type of the file that
.B \-type
does not check.
.IP "\-context \fIpattern\fR"
(SELinux only) Security context of the file matches glob
.IR pattern .

.SS ACTIONS
.IP "\-delete\fR"
Delete files or directories; true if removal succeeded.
If the removal failed, an error message is issued and
.BR find 's
exit status will be nonzero (when it eventually exits).

.BR Warning :
Don't forget that
.B find
evaluates the command line as an
expression, so putting
.B \-delete
first will make
.B find
try to delete everything below the starting points you specified.

The use of the
.B \-delete
action on the command line automatically turns on the
.B \-depth
option.
As in turn
.B \-depth
makes
.B \-prune
ineffective, the
.B \-delete
action cannot usefully be combined with
.BR \-prune .

Often, the user might want to test a find command line with
.B \-print
prior to adding
.B \-delete
for the actual removal run.
To avoid surprising results, it is usually best to remember to use
.B \-depth
explicitly during those earlier test runs.

The
.B \-delete
action will fail to remove a directory unless it is empty.

Together with the
.B \-ignore_readdir_race
option,
.B find
will ignore errors of the
.B \-delete
action in the case the file has disappeared since the parent directory was
read: it will not output an error diagnostic, not change the exit code to
nonzero, and the return code of the
.B \-delete
action will be true.


.IP "\-exec \fIcommand\fR ;"
Execute
.IR command ;
true if 0 status is returned.  All following
arguments to
.B find
are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting
of `;' is encountered.  The string `{}' is replaced by the current
file name being processed everywhere it occurs in the arguments to the
command, not just in arguments where it is alone, as in some versions
of
.BR find .
Both of these constructions might need to be escaped (with a `\e') or
quoted to protect them from expansion by the shell.  See the
.B EXAMPLES
section for examples of the use of the
.B \-exec
option.  The specified
command is run once for each matched file.
The command is executed in the starting directory.
There are unavoidable security problems surrounding use of the
.B \-exec
action;
you should use the
.B \-execdir
option instead.

.IP "\-exec \fIcommand\fR {} +"
This variant of the
.B \-exec
action runs the specified command on the
selected files, but the command line is built by appending each
selected file name at the end; the total number of invocations of the
command will be much less than the number of matched files.  The
command line is built in much the same way that
.B xargs
builds its command lines.  Only one instance of `{}' is allowed within
the command, and it must appear at the end, immediately before the `+';
it needs to be escaped (with a `\e') or quoted to protect it from
interpretation by the shell.
The command is executed in the starting directory.  If any invocation
with the `+' form returns a non-zero value as exit status, then
.B find
returns a non-zero exit status.  If
.B find
encounters an error, this can sometimes cause an
immediate exit, so some pending commands may not be run
at all.  For this reason
.B \-exec\ \fImy-command\fP\ ...\ {}\ +\ \-quit
may not result in
.I my-command
actually being run.  This variant of
.B \-exec
always returns true.

.IP "\-execdir \fIcommand\fR ;"
.IP "\-execdir \fIcommand\fR {} +"
Like
.BR \-exec ,
but the specified command is run from the subdirectory
containing the matched file, which is not normally the directory in
which you started
.BR find .
As with \-exec, the {} should be quoted if find is being invoked from
a shell.
This a much more secure method for invoking commands, as it avoids
race conditions during resolution of the paths to the matched files.
As with the
.B \-exec
action, the `+' form of
.B \-execdir
will build a
command line to process more than one matched file, but any given
invocation of
.I command
will only list files that exist in the same subdirectory.  If you use
this option, you must ensure that your
.B PATH
environment variable does not reference `.';
otherwise, an attacker can run any commands they like by leaving an
appropriately-named file in a directory in which you will run
.BR \-execdir .
The same applies to having entries in
.B PATH
which are empty or which are not absolute directory names.  If
any invocation with the `+' form returns a non-zero value as exit status,
then
.B find
returns a non-zero exit status.  If
.B find
encounters an error, this can sometimes cause an
immediate exit, so some pending commands may not be run
at all.
The result of the action depends on whether the
.B +
or the
.B ;
variant is being used;
.B \-execdir\ \fIcommand\fP\ {}\ +
always returns true, while
.B \-execdir\ \fIcommand\fP\ {}\ ;
returns true only if
.I command
returns 0.


.IP "\-fls \fIfile\fR"
True; like
.B \-ls
but write to \fIfile\fR like
.BR \-fprint .
The output file is always created, even if the predicate is never
matched.
See the
.B UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.

.IP "\-fprint \fIfile\fR"
True; print the full file name into file
.IR file .
If \fIfile\fR
does not exist when \fBfind\fR is run, it is created; if it does
exist, it is truncated.  The file names
.I /dev/stdout
and
.I /dev/stderr
are handled specially; they refer to the standard
output and standard error output, respectively.
The output file is always created, even if the predicate is never matched.
See the
.B UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.

.IP "\-fprint0 \fIfile\fR"
True; like
.B \-print0
but write to \fIfile\fR like
.BR \-fprint .
The output file is always created, even if the predicate is never matched.
See the
.B UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.

.IP "\-fprintf \fIfile\fR \fIformat\fR"
True; like
.B \-printf
but write to \fIfile\fR like
.BR \-fprint .
The output file is always created, even if the predicate is never matched.
See the
.B UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.

.IP \-ls
True; list current file in
.B ls \-dils
format on standard output.
The block counts are of 1\ KB blocks, unless the environment variable
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
is set, in which case 512-byte blocks are used.
See the
.B UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.

.IP "\-ok \fIcommand\fR ;"
Like
.B \-exec
but ask the user first.  If the user agrees, run the command.  Otherwise
just return false.  If the command is run, its standard input is redirected
from
.IR /dev/null .
This action may not be specified together with the
.B \-files0\-from
option.

.IP
The response to the prompt is matched against a pair of regular
expressions to determine if it is an affirmative or negative
response.  This regular expression is obtained from the system if the
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
environment variable is set, or otherwise from
.BR find 's
message translations.  If the system has no suitable
definition,
.BR find 's
own definition will be used.
In either case, the interpretation of the regular expression itself
will be affected by the environment variables
.B LC_CTYPE
(character classes) and
.B LC_COLLATE
(character ranges and equivalence classes).



.IP "\-okdir \fIcommand\fR ;"
Like
.B \-execdir
but ask the user first in the same way as for
.BR \-ok .
If the user does not agree, just return false.
If the command is run, its standard input is redirected from
.IR /dev/null .
This action may not be specified together with the
.B \-files0\-from
option.


.IP \-print
True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed by a
newline.
If you are piping the output of
.B find
into another program and there is the faintest possibility that the files
which you are searching for might contain a newline, then you should
seriously consider using the
.B \-print0
option instead of
.BR \-print .
See the
.B UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.

.IP \-print0
True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed by a
null character (instead of the newline character that
.B \-print
uses).
This allows file names that contain newlines or other types of white
space to be correctly interpreted by programs that process the
\fBfind\fR output.  This option corresponds to the
.B \-0
option of
.BR xargs .

.IP "\-printf \fIformat\fR"
True; print \fIformat\fR on the standard output, interpreting `\e'
escapes and `%' directives.  Field widths and precisions can be
specified as with the
.BR printf (3)
C function.  Please note that many of
the fields are printed as %s rather than %d, and this may mean that
flags don't work as you might expect.  This also means that the `\-'
flag does work (it forces fields to be left-aligned).  Unlike
.BR \-print ,
.B \-printf
does not add a newline at the end of the string.  The escapes
and directives are:
.RS
.IP \ea
Alarm bell.
.IP \eb
Backspace.
.IP \ec
Stop printing from this format immediately and flush the output.
.IP \ef
Form feed.
.IP \en
Newline.
.IP \er
Carriage return.
.IP \et
Horizontal tab.
.IP \ev
Vertical tab.
.IP \e0
ASCII NUL.
.IP \e\e
A literal backslash (`\e').
.IP \eNNN
The character whose ASCII code is NNN (octal).
.PP
A `\e' character followed by any other character is treated as an
ordinary character, so they both are printed.
.IP %%
A literal percent sign.
.IP %a
File's last access time in the format returned by the C
.BR ctime (3)
function.
.IP %A\fIk\fP
File's last access time in the format specified by
.IR k ,
which is either `@' or a directive for the C
.BR strftime (3)
function.
The following shows an incomplete list of possible values for \fIk\fR.
Please refer to the documentation of
.BR strftime (3)
for the full list.
Some of the conversion specification characters might not be available on all systems,
due to differences in the implementation of the
.BR strftime (3)
library function.
.RS
.IP @
seconds since Jan.\& 1, 1970, 00:00 GMT, with fractional part.
.PP
Time fields:
.IP H
hour (00..23)
.IP I
hour (01..12)
.IP k
hour ( 0..23)
.IP l
hour ( 1..12)
.IP M
minute (00..59)
.IP p
locale's AM or PM
.IP r
time, 12-hour (hh:mm:ss [AP]M)
.IP S
Second (00.00 \&..\& 61.00).  There is a fractional part.
.IP T
time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss.xxxxxxxxxx)
.IP +
Date and time, separated by `+', for example
`2004\-04\-28+22:22:05.0'.  This is a GNU extension.  The time is
given in the current timezone (which may be affected by setting the
.B TZ
environment variable).  The seconds field includes a fractional part.
.IP X
locale's time representation (H:M:S).  The seconds field includes a
fractional part.
.IP Z
time zone (e.g., EDT), or nothing if no time zone is determinable
.PP
Date fields:
.IP a
locale's abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
.IP A
locale's full weekday name, variable length (Sunday..Saturday)
.IP b
locale's abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)
.IP B
locale's full month name, variable length (January..December)
.IP c
locale's date and time (Sat Nov 04 12:02:33 EST 1989).  The format is
the same as for
.BR ctime (3)
and so to preserve compatibility with that format, there is no fractional part
in the seconds field.
.IP d
day of month (01..31)
.IP D
date (mm/dd/yy)
.IP F
date (yyyy-mm-dd)
.IP h
same as b
.IP j
day of year (001..366)
.IP m
month (01..12)
.IP U
week number of year with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
.IP w
day of week (0..6)
.IP W
week number of year with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
.IP x
locale's date representation (mm/dd/yy)
.IP y
last two digits of year (00..99)
.IP Y
year (1970...\&)
.RE
.IP %b
The amount of disk space used for this file in 512-byte blocks.  Since disk
space is allocated in multiples of the filesystem block size this is usually
greater than %s/512, but it can also be smaller if the file is a sparse file.

.IP %B\fIk\fP
File's birth time, i.e., its creation time, in the format specified by
.IR k ,
which is the same as for %A.
This directive produces an empty string if the underlying operating system or
filesystem does not support birth times.

.IP %c
File's last status change time in the format returned by the C
.BR ctime (3)
function.
.IP %C\fIk\fP
File's last status change time in the format specified by
.IR k ,
which is the same as for %A.
.IP %d
File's depth in the directory tree; 0 means the file is a starting-point.
.IP %D
The device number on which the file exists (the st_dev field of struct
stat), in decimal.
.IP %f
Print the basename; the file's name with any leading directories
removed (only the last element).  For
.BR / ,
the result is `/'.
See the
.B EXAMPLES
section for an example.

.IP %F
Type of the filesystem the file is on; this value can be used for
\-fstype.
.IP %g
File's group name, or numeric group ID if the group has no name.
.IP %G
File's numeric group ID.
.IP %h
Dirname; the Leading directories of the file's name (all but the last
element).  If the file name contains no slashes (since it is in the
current directory) the %h specifier expands to `.'.  For files which
are themselves directories and contain a slash (including
.BR / ),
%h expands to the empty string.  See the
.B EXAMPLES
section for an example.
.IP %H
Starting-point under which file was found.
.IP %i
File's inode number (in decimal).
.IP %k
The amount of disk space used for this file in 1\ KB blocks.
Since disk space is allocated in multiples of the filesystem block
size this is usually greater than %s/1024,
but it can also be smaller if the file is a sparse file.
.IP %l
Object of symbolic link (empty string if file is not a symbolic link).
.IP %m
File's permission bits (in octal).  This option uses the `traditional'
numbers which most Unix implementations use, but if your particular
implementation uses an unusual ordering of octal permissions bits, you
will see a difference between the actual value of the file's mode and
the output of %m.
Normally you will want to have a leading zero on this number,
and to do this, you should use the
.B #
flag (as in, for example, `%#m').
.IP %M
File's permissions (in symbolic form, as for
.BR ls ).
This directive is supported in findutils 4.2.5 and later.
.IP %n
Number of hard links to file.
.IP %p
File's name.
.IP %P
File's name with the name of the starting-point under which
it was found removed.
.IP %s
File's size in bytes.
.IP %S
File's sparseness.  This is calculated as (BLOCKSIZE*st_blocks /
st_size).  The exact value you will get for an ordinary file of a
certain length is system-dependent.  However, normally sparse files
will have values less than 1.0, and files which use indirect blocks
may have a value which is greater than 1.0.  In general the number of
blocks used by a file is file system dependent.
The value used for BLOCKSIZE is system-dependent, but is usually 512
bytes.
If the file size is zero, the value printed is undefined.
On systems which lack support for st_blocks,
a file's sparseness is assumed to be 1.0.
.IP %t
File's last modification time in the format returned by the C
.BR ctime (3)
function.
.IP %T\fIk\fP
File's last modification time in the format specified by
.IR k ,
which is the same as for %A.
.IP %u
File's user name, or numeric user ID if the user has no name.
.IP %U
File's numeric user ID.
.IP %y
File's type (like in
.BR "ls \-l" ),
U=unknown type (shouldn't happen)
.IP %Y
File's type (like %y), plus follow symbolic links: `L'=loop, `N'=nonexistent,
`?' for any other error when determining the type of the target of a symbolic
link.
.IP %Z
(SELinux only) file's security context.
.IP "%{ %[ %("
Reserved for future use.
.PP
A `%' character followed by any other character is discarded, but the
other character is printed (don't rely on this, as further format
characters may be introduced).  A `%' at the end of the format
argument causes undefined behaviour since there is no following
character.  In some locales, it may hide your door keys, while in
others it may remove the final page from the novel you are reading.

The %m and %d directives support the
.BR # ,
.B 0
and
.B +
flags, but the other directives do not, even if they
print numbers.  Numeric directives that do not support these flags
include
.BR G ,
.BR U ,
.BR b ,
.BR D ,
.B  k
and
.BR n .
The `\-' format flag is supported and changes the alignment of a field
from right-justified (which is the default) to left-justified.
.PP
See the
.B UNUSUAL FILENAMES
section for information about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.


.RE
.IP \-prune
True; if the file is a directory, do not descend into it.  If
.B \-depth
is given, then
.B \-prune
has no effect.  Because
.B \-delete
implies
.BR \-depth ,
you cannot usefully use
.B \-prune
and
.B \-delete
together.
For example, to skip the directory
.I src/emacs
and all files and directories under it, and print the names of the other files
found, do something like this:
.in +4m
.nf
find . \-path ./src/emacs \-prune \-o \-print
.fi
.in


.IP "\-quit"
Exit immediately (with return value zero if no errors have occurred).
This is different to
.B \-prune
because
.B \-prune
only applies to the contents of pruned directories, while
.B \-quit
simply makes
.B find
stop immediately.  No child processes will be left
running.  Any command lines which have been built by
.B \-exec\ ...\ +
or
.B \-execdir\ ...\ +
are invoked before the program is
exited.  After
.B \-quit
is executed, no more files specified on the command line will be
processed.  For example,
.RB ` "find\ \fI/tmp/foo\fP\ \fI/tmp/bar\fP\ \-print\ \-quit" `
will print only `/tmp/foo`.
.br
One common use of
.B \-quit
is to stop searching the file system once we have
found what we want.  For example, if we want to find just a single
file we can do this:
.in +4m
.nf
find / -name needle -print -quit
.fi
.in

.SS OPERATORS
Listed in order of decreasing precedence:

.IP "( \fIexpr\fR )"
Force precedence.  Since parentheses are special to the shell, you
will normally need to quote them.  Many of the examples in this manual
page use backslashes for this purpose: `\e(...\e)' instead of `(...)'.

.IP "! \fIexpr\fR"
True if \fIexpr\fR is false.  This character will also usually need
protection from interpretation by the shell.

.IP "\-not \fIexpr\fR"
Same as !\&
.IR expr ,
but not POSIX compliant.

.IP "\fIexpr1 expr2\fR"
Two expressions in a row are taken to be joined with an
implied
.BR \-a ;
\fIexpr2\fR is not evaluated if \fIexpr1\fR is false.

.IP "\fIexpr1\fR \-a \fIexpr2\fR"
Same as
.IR "expr1 expr2" .

.IP "\fIexpr1\fR \-and \fIexpr2\fR"
Same as
.IR "expr1 expr2" ,
but not POSIX compliant.

.IP "\fIexpr1\fR \-o \fIexpr2\fR"
Or; \fIexpr2\fR is not evaluated if \fIexpr1\fR is true.

.IP "\fIexpr1\fR \-or \fIexpr2\fR"
Same as \fIexpr1\fR
.B \-o
.IR expr2 ,
but not POSIX compliant.

.IP "\fIexpr1\fR , \fIexpr2\fR"
List; both \fIexpr1\fR and \fIexpr2\fR are always evaluated.  The
value of \fIexpr1\fR is discarded; the value of the list is the value
of
.IR expr2 .
The comma operator can be useful for searching for
several different types of thing, but traversing the filesystem
hierarchy only once.  The
.B \-fprintf
action can be used to list the various matched items into several
different output files.
.P
Please note that
.B \-a
when specified implicitly (for example by two tests appearing without
an explicit operator between them) or explicitly has higher precedence
than
.BR \-o .
This means that
.B find . \-name afile \-o \-name bfile \-print
will never print
.IR afile .
.
.SH UNUSUAL FILENAMES
Many of the actions of
.B find
result in the printing of data which is under the control of other
users.  This includes file names, sizes, modification times and so
forth.  File names are a potential problem since they can contain any
character except `\e0' and `/'.  Unusual characters in file names can
do unexpected and often undesirable things to your terminal (for
example, changing the settings of your function keys on some
terminals).  Unusual characters are handled differently by various
actions, as described below.

.IP "\-print0, \-fprint0"
Always print the exact filename, unchanged, even if the output is
going to a terminal.

.IP "\-ls, \-fls"
Unusual characters are always escaped.  White space, backslash, and
double quote characters are printed using C-style escaping (for
example `\ef', `\e\(dq').  Other unusual characters are printed using an
octal escape.  Other printable characters (for
.B \-ls
and
.B \-fls
these are the characters between octal 041 and 0176) are printed as-is.

.IP "\-printf, \-fprintf"
If the output is not going to a terminal, it is printed as-is.
Otherwise, the result depends on which directive is in use.  The
directives %D, %F, %g, %G, %H, %Y, and %y expand to values which are
not under control of files' owners, and so are printed as-is.  The
directives %a, %b, %c, %d, %i, %k, %m, %M, %n, %s, %t, %u and %U have
values which are under the control of files' owners but which cannot
be used to send arbitrary data to the terminal, and so these are
printed as-is.  The directives %f, %h, %l, %p and %P are quoted.  This
quoting is performed in the same way as for GNU
.BR ls .
This is not the same quoting mechanism as the one used for
.B \-ls
and
.BR \-fls .
If you are able to decide what format to use for the output of
.B find
then it is normally better to use `\e0' as a terminator
than to use newline, as file names can contain white space and newline
characters.  The setting of the
.B LC_CTYPE
environment variable is used to determine which characters need to be quoted.

.IP "\-print, \-fprint"
Quoting is handled in the same way as for
.B \-printf
and
.BR \-fprintf .
If you are using
.B find
in a script or in a situation where the matched files might have
arbitrary names, you should consider using
.B \-print0
instead of
.BR \-print .
.P
The
.B \-ok
and
.B \-okdir
actions print the current filename as-is.  This may change in a future release.
.
.SH "STANDARDS CONFORMANCE"
For closest compliance to the POSIX standard, you should set the
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
environment variable.
The following options are specified in the POSIX standard
(IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, 2016 Edition):

.IP \fB\-H\fR
This option is supported.

.IP \fB\-L\fR
This option is supported.

.IP \fB\-name\fR
This option is supported, but POSIX conformance depends on the
POSIX conformance of the system's
.BR fnmatch (3)
library function.  As of findutils-4.2.2, shell metacharacters
(`*', `?' or `[]' for example) match a leading `.', because
IEEE PASC interpretation 126 requires this.
This is a change from previous versions of findutils.

.IP \fB\-type\fR
Supported.
POSIX specifies `b', `c', `d', `l', `p', `f' and `s'.
GNU find also supports `D', representing a Door, where the OS provides these.
Furthermore, GNU find allows multiple types to be specified at once in a
comma-separated list.

.IP \fB\-ok\fR
Supported.
Interpretation of the response is according to the `yes' and `no'
patterns selected by setting the
.B LC_MESSAGES
environment variable.
When the
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
environment variable is set, these patterns are taken system's definition
of a positive (yes) or negative (no) response.
See the system's documentation for
.BR nl_langinfo (3),
in particular YESEXPR and NOEXPR.
When
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
is not set, the patterns are instead taken from
.BR find 's
own message catalogue.

.IP \fB\-newer\fR
Supported.  If the file specified is a symbolic link, it is always
dereferenced.  This is a change from previous behaviour, which used to
take the relevant time from the symbolic link; see the HISTORY section
below.

.IP \fB\-perm\fR
Supported.  If the
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
environment variable is not set,
some mode arguments (for example +a+x) which are not valid in POSIX
are supported for backward-compatibility.

.IP "Other primaries"
The primaries
.BR \-atime ,
.BR \-ctime ,
.BR \-depth ,
.BR \-exec ,
.BR \-group ,
.BR \-links ,
.BR \-mtime ,
.BR \-nogroup ,
.BR \-nouser ,
.BR \-ok ,
.BR \-path ,
.BR \-print ,
.BR \-prune ,
.BR \-size ,
.B \-user
and
.B \-xdev
are all supported.

.P
The POSIX standard specifies parentheses `(', `)', negation `!' and the
logical AND/OR operators
.B \-a
and
.BR \-o .
.P
All other options, predicates, expressions and so forth are extensions
beyond the POSIX standard.  Many of these extensions are not unique to
GNU find, however.
.P
The POSIX standard requires that
.B find
detects loops:
.IP
The
.B find
utility shall detect infinite loops; that is, entering a
previously visited directory that is an ancestor of the last file
encountered.  When it detects an infinite loop, find shall write a
diagnostic message to standard error and shall either recover its
position in the hierarchy or terminate.
.P
GNU
.B find
complies with these requirements.  The link count of
directories which contain entries which are hard links to an ancestor
will often be lower than they otherwise should be.  This can mean that
GNU find will sometimes optimise away the visiting of a subdirectory
which is actually a link to an ancestor.  Since
.B find
does not actually enter such a subdirectory, it is allowed to avoid
emitting a diagnostic message.  Although this behaviour may be
somewhat confusing, it is unlikely that anybody actually depends on
this behaviour.  If the leaf optimisation has been turned off with
.BR \-noleaf ,
the directory entry will always be examined and the diagnostic message
will be issued where it is appropriate.  Symbolic links cannot be used
to create filesystem cycles as such, but if the
.B \-L
option or the
.B \-follow
option is in use, a diagnostic message is issued when
.B find
encounters a loop of symbolic links.  As with loops containing hard
links, the leaf optimisation will often mean that
.B find
knows that it doesn't need to call
.I stat()
or
.I chdir()
on the symbolic link, so this diagnostic is frequently not necessary.
.P
The
.B \-d
option is supported for compatibility with various BSD systems,
but you should use the POSIX-compliant option
.B \-depth
instead.
.P
The
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
environment variable does not affect the behaviour of the
.B \-regex
or
.B \-iregex
tests because those tests aren't specified in the POSIX standard.
.
.SH "ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES"

.IP LANG
Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that
are unset or null.

.IP LC_ALL
If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the
other internationalization variables.

.IP LC_COLLATE
The POSIX standard specifies that this variable affects the pattern
matching to be used for the
.B \-name
option.
GNU find uses the
.BR fnmatch (3)
library function, and so support for
.B LC_COLLATE
depends on the system library.
This variable also affects the interpretation of the response to
.BR \-ok ;
while the
.B LC_MESSAGES
variable selects the actual pattern used to interpret the response to
.BR \-ok ,
the interpretation of any bracket expressions in the pattern will be
affected by
.BR LC_COLLATE .

.IP LC_CTYPE
This variable affects the treatment of character classes used in
regular expressions and also with
the
.B \-name
test, if the system's
.BR fnmatch (3)
library function supports this.  This variable also affects the
interpretation of any character classes in the regular expressions
used to interpret the response to the prompt issued by
.BR \-ok .
The
.B LC_CTYPE
environment variable will also affect which characters are considered
to be unprintable when filenames are printed;
see the section UNUSUAL FILENAMES.

.IP LC_MESSAGES
Determines the locale to be used for internationalised messages.  If the
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
environment variable is set, this also determines the interpretation of
the response to the prompt made by the
.B \-ok
action.

.IP NLSPATH
Determines the location of the internationalisation message catalogues.

.IP PATH
Affects the directories which are searched to find the executables
invoked by
.BR \-exec ,
.BR \-execdir ,
.B \-ok
and
.BR \-okdir .

.IP POSIXLY_CORRECT
Determines the block size used by
.B \-ls
and
.BR \-fls .
If
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
is set, blocks are units of 512 bytes.  Otherwise they are units of 1024 bytes.
.IP
Setting this variable also turns off
warning messages (that is, implies
.BR \-nowarn )
by default, because POSIX requires that apart from
the output for
.BR \-ok ,
all messages printed on stderr are diagnostics and must result in a
non-zero exit status.
.IP
When
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
is not set,
.B "\-perm \fI+zzz\fR"
is treated just like
.B "\-perm \fI/zzz\fR"
if
\fI+zzz\fR is not a valid symbolic mode.  When
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
is set, such
constructs are treated as an error.
.IP
When
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
is set, the response to the prompt made by the
.B \-ok
action is interpreted according to the system's message catalogue, as
opposed to according to
.BR find 's
own message translations.

.IP TZ
Affects the time zone used for some of the time-related format
directives of
.B \-printf
and
.BR \-fprintf .
.
.SH "EXAMPLES"
.\" A bulleted \[bu] list of examples.
.SS Simple `find|xargs` approach
.IP \[bu]
Find files named
.I core
in or below the directory
.I /tmp
and delete them.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find /tmp \-name core \-type f \-print | xargs /bin/rm \-f
.in
\&
.fi
Note that this will work incorrectly if there are
any filenames containing newlines, single or double quotes, or spaces.
.
.SS Safer `find -print0 | xargs -0` approach
.IP \[bu]
Find files named \fIcore\fP in or below the directory \fI/tmp\fP
and delete them, processing filenames in such a way that file or
directory names containing single or double quotes, spaces or newlines
are correctly handled.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find /tmp \-name core \-type f \-print0 | xargs \-0 /bin/rm \-f
.in
\&
.fi
The
.B \-name
test comes before the
.B \-type
test in order to avoid having to call
.BR stat (2)
on every file.
.PP
Note that there is still a race between the time
.B find
traverses the hierarchy printing the matching filenames, and the time the
process executed by
.B xargs
works with that file.
.
.SS Processing arbitrary starting points
.IP \[bu]
Given that another program \fIproggy\fR pre-filters and creates a huge
NUL-separated list of files, process those as starting points, and find
all regular, empty files among them:
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ proggy | find \-files0\-from \- \-maxdepth 0 \-type f \-empty
.in
\&
.fi
The use of
.B `\-files0\-from\ \-`
means to read the names of the starting points from \fIstandard input\fR,
i.e., from the pipe; and
.B \-maxdepth\ 0
ensures that only explicitly those entries are examined without recursing
into directories (in the case one of the starting points is one).
.
.SS
Executing a command for each file
.IP \[bu]
Run
.I file
on every file in or below the current directory.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find . \-type f \-exec file \(aq{}\(aq \e;
.in
\&
.fi
Notice that the braces are enclosed in single quote marks to protect them
from interpretation as shell script punctuation.  The semicolon is
similarly protected by the use of a backslash, though single quotes
could have been used in that case also.
.PP
In many cases, one might prefer the
.B `\-exec\ \&...\&\ +`
or better the
.B `\-execdir\ \&...\&\ +`
syntax for performance and security reasons.
.
.SS Traversing the filesystem just once - for 2 different actions
.IP \[bu]
Traverse the filesystem just once, listing set-user-ID files and
directories into
.I /root/suid.txt
and large files into
.IR /root/big.txt .
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find / \e
.in +4m
.B \e( \-perm \-4000 \-fprintf /root/suid.txt \(aq%#m %u %p\en\(aq \e) , \e
.br
.B \e( \-size +100M \-fprintf /root/big.txt  \(aq%\-10s %p\en\(aq \e)
.in -4m
.in -4m
\&
.fi
This example uses the line-continuation character \(aq\e\(aq on the first two
lines to instruct the shell to continue reading the command on the next line.
.
.SS
Searching files by age
.IP \[bu]
Search for files in your home directory which have been modified in
the last twenty-four hours.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find $HOME  \-mtime 0
.in
\&
.fi
This command works this way because the
time since each file was last modified is divided by 24 hours and any
remainder is discarded.  That means that to match
.B \-mtime
.BR 0 ,
a file will have to have a modification in the past which is less than
24 hours ago.
.
.SS
Searching files by permissions
.IP \[bu]
Search for files which are executable but not readable.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find /sbin /usr/sbin \-executable \e! \-readable \-print
.in
\&
.fi
.
.IP \[bu]
Search for files which have read and write permission for their owner,
and group, but which other users can read but not write to.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find . \-perm 664
.in
\&
.fi
Files which meet these criteria but have other permissions bits set
(for example if someone can execute the file) will not be matched.
.
.IP \[bu]
Search for files which have read and write permission for their owner
and group, and which other users can read, without regard to the
presence of any extra permission bits (for example the executable
bit).
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find . \-perm \-664
.in
\&
.fi
This will match a file which has mode
.IR 0777 ,
for example.
.
.IP \[bu]
Search for files which are writable by somebody (their owner, or
their group, or anybody else).
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find . \-perm /222
.in
\&
.fi
.
.IP \[bu]
Search for files which are writable by either their owner or their group.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find . \-perm /220
.B $ find . \-perm /u+w,g+w
.B $ find . \-perm /u=w,g=w
.in
\&
.fi
All three of these commands do the same thing, but the first one uses
the octal representation of the file mode, and the other two use the
symbolic form.
The files don't have to be writable by both the owner and group to be matched;
either will do.
.
.IP \[bu]
Search for files which are writable by both their owner and their group.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find . \-perm \-220
.B $ find . \-perm \-g+w,u+w
.in
\&
.fi
Both these commands do the same thing.
.
.IP \[bu]
A more elaborate search on permissions.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find . \-perm \-444 \-perm /222 \e! \-perm /111
.B $ find . \-perm \-a+r \-perm /a+w \e! \-perm /a+x
.in
\&
.fi
These two commands both search for files that are readable for everybody
.RB ( "\-perm \-444"
or
.BR "\-perm \-a+r" ),
have at least one write bit
set
.RB ( "\-perm /222"
or
.BR "\-perm /a+w" )
but are not executable for anybody
.RB ( "! \-perm /111"
or
.B ! \-perm /a+x
respectively).
.
.SS
Pruning - omitting files and subdirectories
.IP \[bu]
Copy the contents of
.I /source-dir
to
.IR /dest-dir ,
but omit files and directories named
.I .snapshot
(and anything in them).  It also omits files or directories whose name ends in
`\(ti', but not their contents.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ cd /source-dir
.B $ find . \-name .snapshot \-prune \-o \e( \e! \-name \(aq*~\(aq \-print0 \e) \e
.br
.in +4m
.B | cpio \-pmd0  /dest-dir
.in -4m
.in -4m
\&
.fi
The construct
.B \-prune\ \-o\ \e(\ \&...\&\ \-print0\ \e)
is quite common.  The idea here is that the expression before
.B \-prune
matches things which are to be pruned.  However, the
.B \-prune
action itself returns true, so the following
.B \-o
ensures that the right hand side is evaluated only for those
directories which didn't get pruned (the contents of the pruned
directories are not even visited, so their contents are irrelevant).
The expression on the right hand side of the
.B \-o
is in parentheses only for clarity.  It emphasises that the
.B \-print0
action takes place only for things that didn't have
.B \-prune
applied to them.  Because the default `and' condition between tests
binds more tightly than
.BR \-o ,
this is the default anyway, but the parentheses help to show
what is going on.
.
.IP \[bu]
Given the following directory of projects and their associated SCM
administrative directories, perform an efficient search for the
projects' roots:
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find repo/ \e
.in +4m
.B \e( \-exec test \-d \(aq{}/.svn\(aq \e; \e
.B \-or \-exec test \-d \(aq{}/.git\(aq \e; \e
.B \-or \-exec test \-d \(aq{}/CVS\(aq \e; \e
.B \e) \-print \-prune
.in -4m
.in -4m
\&
.fi
Sample output:
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B repo/project1/CVS
.B repo/gnu/project2/.svn
.B repo/gnu/project3/.svn
.B repo/gnu/project3/src/.svn
.B repo/project4/.git
.in
\&
.fi
In this example,
.B \-prune
prevents unnecessary descent into directories that have already been
discovered (for example we do not search
.I project3/src
because we already found
.IR project3/.svn ),
but ensures sibling directories
.RI ( project2
and
.IR project3 )
are found.
.
.SS
Other useful examples
.IP \[bu]
Search for several file types.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find /tmp \-type f,d,l
.in
\&
.fi
Search for files, directories, and symbolic links in the directory
.I /tmp
passing these types as a comma-separated list (GNU extension),
which is otherwise equivalent to the longer, yet more portable:
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find /tmp \e( \-type f \-o \-type d \-o \-type l \e)
.in
\&
.fi
.
.IP \[bu]
Search for files with the particular name
.I needle
and stop immediately when we find the first one.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find / -name needle -print -quit
.in
\&
.fi
.
.IP \[bu]
Demonstrate the interpretation of the
.B %f
and
.B %h
format directives of the
.B \-printf
action for some corner-cases.
Here is an example including some output.
.nf
\&
.in +4m
.B $ find . .. / /tmp /tmp/TRACE compile compile/64/tests/find -maxdepth 0 -printf '[%h][%f]\en'
.B [.][.]
.B [.][..]
.B [][/]
.B [][tmp]
.B [/tmp][TRACE]
.B [.][compile]
.B [compile/64/tests][find]
.in
\&
.fi
.
.SH EXIT STATUS
.B find
exits with status 0 if all files are processed successfully, greater
than 0 if errors occur.
This is deliberately a very broad description,
but if the return value is non-zero,
you should not rely on the correctness of the results of
.BR find .

When some error occurs,
.B find
may stop immediately, without completing all the actions specified.
For example, some starting points may not have been examined or some
pending program invocations for
.B \-exec\ \&...\&\ {}\ +
or
.B "\-execdir\ \&...\&\ {}\ +
may not have been performed.
.
.SH "HISTORY"
As of findutils-4.2.2, shell metacharacters (`*', `?' or `[]' for
example) used in filename patterns match a leading `.', because
IEEE POSIX interpretation 126 requires this.
.P
As of findutils-4.3.3,
.B \-perm\ /000
now matches all files instead of none.
.P
Nanosecond-resolution
timestamps were implemented in findutils-4.3.3.
.P
As of findutils-4.3.11, the
.B \-delete
action sets
.BR find 's
exit status to a nonzero value when it fails.
However,
.B find
will not exit immediately.  Previously,
.BR find 's
exit status was unaffected by the failure of
.BR \-delete .
.TS
l l l .
Feature	Added in	Also occurs in
\-files0\-from	4.9.0
\-newerXY	4.3.3	BSD
\-D	4.3.1
\-O	4.3.1
\-readable	4.3.0
\-writable	4.3.0
\-executable	4.3.0
\-regextype	4.2.24
\-exec ... +	4.2.12	POSIX
\-execdir	4.2.12	BSD
\-okdir	4.2.12
\-samefile	4.2.11
\-H	4.2.5	POSIX
\-L	4.2.5	POSIX
\-P	4.2.5	BSD
\-delete	4.2.3
\-quit	4.2.3
\-d	4.2.3	BSD
\-wholename	4.2.0
\-iwholename	4.2.0
\-ignore_readdir_race	4.2.0
\-fls	4.0
\-ilname	3.8
\-iname	3.8
\-ipath	3.8
\-iregex	3.8
.TE
.P
The syntax
\.B \-perm +MODE
was removed in findutils-4.5.12, in favour of
\.B \-perm
.BR /MODE .
The
.B +MODE
syntax had been deprecated since findutils-4.2.21
which was released in 2005.
.
.SH "NON-BUGS"
.SS Operator precedence surprises
The command
.B find . \-name afile \-o \-name bfile \-print
will never print
.I afile
because this is actually equivalent to
.BR "find . \-name afile \-o \e( \-name bfile \-a \-print \e)" .
Remember that the precedence of
.B \-a
is higher than that of
.B \-o
and when there is no operator specified between tests,
.B \-a
is assumed.
.SS \(lqpaths must precede expression\(rq error message
.nf
.B $ find . \-name *.c \-print
find: paths must precede expression
find: possible unquoted pattern after predicate `-name'?
.fi
.P
This happens when the shell could expand the pattern
.I *.c
to more than one file name existing in the current directory,
and passing the resulting file names in the command line to
.B find
like this:
.nf
.
.B find . \-name frcode.c locate.c word_io.c \-print
.
.fi
That command is of course not going to work, because the
.B \-name
predicate allows exactly only one pattern as argument.  Instead of doing things
this way, you should enclose the pattern in quotes or escape the wildcard, thus
allowing
.B find
to use the pattern with the wildcard during the search for file name matching
instead of file names expanded by the parent shell:
.nf
.B $ find . \-name \(aq*.c\(aq \-print
.B $ find . \-name \e*.c \-print
.fi
.
.SH "BUGS"
There are security problems inherent in the behaviour that the POSIX
standard specifies for
.BR find ,
which therefore cannot be fixed.  For example, the
.B \-exec
action is
inherently insecure, and
.B \-execdir
should be used instead.
.
.P
The environment variable
.B LC_COLLATE
has no effect on the
.B \-ok
action.
.
.SH "REPORTING BUGS"
GNU findutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/#get-help>
.br
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>
.PP
Report any other issue via the form at the GNU Savannah bug tracker:
.RS
<https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils>
.RE
General topics about the GNU findutils package are discussed at the
.I bug\-findutils
mailing list:
.RS
<https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-findutils>
.RE
.
.SH COPYRIGHT
Copyright \(co 1990-2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
.br
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR chmod (1),
.BR locate (1),
.BR ls (1),
.BR updatedb (1),
.BR xargs (1),
.BR lstat (2),
.BR stat (2),
.BR ctime (3)
.BR fnmatch (3),
.BR printf (3),
.BR strftime (3),
.BR locatedb (5),
.BR regex (7)
.PP
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/find>
.br
or available locally via:
.B info find