Webpicked find
There is probably a lot to look out in this open world for better, but that can be a good venture for a lifetime. Why not I embark on it now.
Find
More than anything, I certainly have to make a disclosure pre-emptively that this section is heavily borrowed. Specifically, at the moment I find example post in https://alvinalexander.com/unix/edu/examples/find.shtml very helpful. Here I copy a bunch of commands that gradually progress from basic to more advanced in structure and tease out a variety of problems while searching though file system to locate a particular file and perform some action in it.
basic 'find file' commands
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find / -name foo.txt -type f -print # full command
find / -name foo.txt -type f # -print isn't necessary
find / -name foo.txt # don't have to specify "type==file"
find . -name foo.txt # search under the current dir
find . -name "foo.*" # wildcard
find . -name "*.txt" # wildcard
find /users/al -name Cookbook -type d # search '/users/al' dir
search multiple dirs
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find /opt /usr /var -name foo.scala -type f # search multiple dirs
case-insensitive searching
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find . -iname foo # find foo, Foo, FOo, FOO, etc.
find . -iname foo -type d # same thing, but only dirs
find . -iname foo -type f # same thing, but only files
find files with different extensions
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find . -type f \( -name "*.c" -o -name "*.sh" \) # *.c and *.sh files
find . -type f \( -name "*cache" -o -name "*xml" -o -name "*html" \) # three patterns
find files that don't match a pattern (-not)
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find . -type f -not -name "*.html" # find all files not ending in ".html"
find files by text in the file (find + grep)
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find . -type f -name "*.java" -exec grep -l StringBuffer {} \; # find StringBuffer in all *.java files
find . -type f -name "*.java" -exec grep -il string {} \; # ignore case with -i option
find . -type f -name "*.gz" -exec zgrep 'GET /foo' {} \; # search for a string in gzip'd files
5 lines before, 10 lines after grep matches
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find . -type f -name "*.scala" -exec grep -B5 -A10 'null' {} \;
(see https://alvinalexander.com/linux-unix/find-grep-print-lines-before-after-search-term)
find files and act on them (find + exec)
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find /usr/local -name "*.html" -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \; # change html files to mode 644
find htdocs cgi-bin -name "*.cgi" -type f -exec chmod 755 {} \; # change cgi files to mode 755
find . -name "*.pl" -exec ls -ld {} \; # run ls command on files found
find and copy
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find . -type f -name "*.mp3" -exec cp {} /tmp/MusicFiles \; # cp *.mp3 files to /tmp/MusicFiles
copy one file to many dirs
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find dir1 dir2 dir3 dir4 -type d -exec cp header.shtml {} \; # copy the file header.shtml to those dirs
find and delete
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find . -type f -name "Foo*" -exec rm {} \; # remove all "Foo*" files under current dir
find . -type d -name CVS -exec rm -r {} \; # remove all subdirectories named "CVS" under current dir
find files by modification time
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find . -mtime 1 # 24 hours
find . -mtime -7 # last 7 days
find . -mtime -7 -type f # just files
find . -mtime -7 -type d # just dirs
find files by modification time using a temp file
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touch 09301330 poop # 1) create a temp file with a specific timestamp
find . -mnewer poop # 2) returns a list of new files
rm poop # 3) rm the temp file
find with time: this works on mac os x
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find / -newerct '1 minute ago' -print
find and tar
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find . -type f -name "*.java" | xargs tar cvf myfile.tar
find . -type f -name "*.java" | xargs tar rvf myfile.tar
(see https://alvinalexander.com/blog/post/linux-unix/using-find-xargs-tar-create-huge-archive-cygwin-linux-unix
for more information)
find, tar, and xargs
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find . -name -type f '*.mp3' -mtime -180 -print0 | xargs -0 tar rvf music.tar
(-print0 helps handle spaces in filenames)
(see https://alvinalexander.com/mac-os-x/mac-backup-filename-directories-spaces-find-tar-xargs)
find and pax (instead of xargs and tar)
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find . -type f -name "*html" | xargs tar cvf jw-htmlfiles.tar -
find . -type f -name "*html" | pax -w -f jw-htmlfiles.tar
(see https://alvinalexander.com/blog/post/linux-unix/using-pax-instead-of-tar)
Besides the abovementioned link and references, man pages of gnu commands are excellent and complete literature to go through. For example, online man pages of find command is hosted in https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/find.1.html#EXAMPLES.