Linux find file in all folder

Find Files in Linux Using the Command Line

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When you have to find a file in Linux, it’s sometimes not as easy as finding a file in another operating system. This is especially true if you are running Linux without a graphical user interface and need to rely on the command line. This article covers the basics of how to find a file in Linux using the CLI. The find command in Linux is used to find a file (or files) by recursively filtering objects in the file system based on a simple conditional mechanism. You can use the find command to search for a file or directory on your file system. By using the -exec flag ( find -exec ), matches, which can be files, directories, symbolic links, system devices, etc., can be found and immediately processed within the same command.

Find a File in Linux by Name or Extension

Use find from the command line to locate a specific file by name or extension. The following example searches for *.err files in the /home/username/ directory and all sub-directories:

find /home/username/ -name "*.err" 

Using Common find Commands and Syntax to Find a File in Linux

find expressions take the following form:

find options starting/path expression 

• The options attribute will control the find process’s behavior and optimization method.
• The starting/path attribute will define the top-level directory where find begins filtering.
• The expression attribute controls the tests that search the directory hierarchy to produce output.

Consider the following example command:

find -O3 -L /var/www/ -name "*.html" 

This command enables the maximum optimization level (-O3) and allows find to follow symbolic links ( -L ). find searches the entire directory tree beneath /var/www/ for files that end with .html .

Basic Examples

Command	Description
find . -name testfile.txt	Find a file called testfile.txt in current and sub-directories.
find /home -name *.jpg	Find all .jpg files in the /home and sub-directories.
find . -type f -empty	Find an empty file within the current directory.
find /home -user exampleuser -mtime -7 -iname «.db»	Find all .db files (ignoring text case) modified in the last 7 days by a user named exampleuser.

Options and Optimization for find

The default configuration for find will ignore symbolic links (shortcut files). If you want find to follow and return symbolic links, you can add the -L option to the command, as shown in the example above.

find optimizes its filtering strategy to increase performance. Three user-selectable optimization levels are specified as -O1 , -O2 , and -O3 . The -O1 optimization is the default and forces find to filter based on filename before running all other tests.

Optimization at the -O2 level prioritizes file name filters, as in -O1 , and then runs all file-type filtering before proceeding with other more resource-intensive conditions. Level -O3 optimization allows find to perform the most severe optimization and reorders all tests based on their relative expense and the likelihood of their success.

Command	Description
-O1	(Default) filter based on file name first.
-O2	File name first, then file type.
-O3	Allow find to automatically re-order the search based on efficient use of resources and likelihood of success.
-maxdepth X	Search current directory as well as all sub-directories X levels deep.
-iname	Search without regard for text case.
-not	Return only results that do not match the test case.
-type f	Search for files.
-type d	Search for directories.

Find a File in Linux by Modification Time

The find command contains the ability to filter a directory hierarchy based on when the file was last modified:

find / -name "*conf" -mtime -7 find /home/exampleuser/ -name "*conf" -mtime -3 

The first command returns a list of all files in the entire file system that end with the characters conf and modified in the last seven days. The second command filters exampleuser user’s home directory for files with names that end with the characters conf and modified in the previous three days.

Use grep to Find a File in Linux Based on Content

The find command can only filter the directory hierarchy based on a file’s name and metadata. If you need to search based on the file’s content, use a tool like grep . Consider the following example:

find . -type f -exec grep "example" '<>' \; -print 

This searches every object in the current directory hierarchy ( . ) that is a file ( -type f ) and then runs the command grep «example» for every file that satisfies the conditions. The files that match are printed on the screen ( -print ). The curly braces ( <> ) are a placeholder for the find match results. The <> are enclosed in single quotes ( ‘ ) to avoid handing grep a malformed file name. The -exec command is terminated with a semicolon ( ; ), which should be escaped ( \; ) to avoid interpretation by the shell.

How to Find and Process a File in Linux

The -exec option runs commands against every object that matches the find expression. Consider the following example:

find . -name "rc.conf" -exec chmod o+r '<>' \; 

This filters every object in the current hierarchy ( . ) for files named rc.conf and runs the chmod o+r command to modify the find results’ file permissions.

The commands run with the -exec are executed in the find process’s root directory. Use -execdir to perform the specified command in the directory where the match resides. This may alleviate security concerns and produce a more desirable performance for some operations.

The -exec or -execdir options run without further prompts. If you prefer to be prompted before action is taken, replace -exec with -ok or -execdir with -okdir .

How to Find and Delete a File in Linux

To delete the files that end up matching your search, you can add -delete at the end of the expression. Do this only when you are positive the results will only match the files you wish to delete.

In the following example, find locates all files in the hierarchy starting at the current directory and fully recursing into the directory tree. In this example, find will delete all files that end with the characters .err :

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

This page was originally published on Monday, October 25, 2010.

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How to Search and Find Files Recursively in Linux

This brief tutorial explains how to search and find the files recursively in the Linux operating systems.

After reading this article, you will be able to find any file recursively using the different techniques including a single file search, multiple files search, find files by permissions, and more. This document is optimized for both new and experienced Linux users. All methods are valid for every Linux distribution.

All examples in this tutorial contain screenshots to make it easy for any Linux user to understand and reproduce them.

Finding Files Recursively in Linux

The find command does not need flags to search the files recursively in the current directory. You only need to define the main directory and the file name using the –name option. This command will search the file within the main directory and all subdirectories.

The syntax is simple, as shown in the following:

If you want to find the 27.jpg file within your home directory and subdirectories, run the following command as shown in the following screenshot:

As you can see, the file was found in the /home/linuxhint/Downloads/recur subdirectory.

An alternative to the previous command is the tree command shown in the following example where you search the same file named 27.jpg within the current directory:

As you can see in the previous figure, the format is pretty different. It seems to be more user friendly or nicer as long as you don’t need to copy the full path to paste it.

The following screenshot shows how to use the find command to recursively search more than a file.

The syntax to search multiple files recursively is the following:

Note that there is a –o flag before the second file name. You can add more than one file by adding more –o –name flags. For example, to find 4 files with the same command, use the following syntax:

In the practical example described in the following image, use this command to find a file named 27.jpg and a file whose name begins with “DIAGRAM” but without specifying its extension. Instead, use a wildcard (*) to find any file named DIAGRAM independently of its type.

As you can see in the previous image, both files were found recursively.

The next example describes how to find the files by extension using the find command. In the following figure, you can see how to recursively find all the .jpg files using the wildcard again. The syntax is pretty simple:

Thus, to find all the .jpg files recursively, run the following command:

As shown in the previous image, all the jpg files including their path are listed successfully. You can replace the .jpg extension for any extension that you want to search like .png, .txt, .c and more.

Now, let’s assume that you don’t want to find a file but a directory recursively. All you need to do is to use the same command that was shown in the first example of this tutorial then add the -type d option. The syntax as follows:

In the following practical example, use the previous syntax to find the recur directory.

As you see in the previous figure, the directory named “recur” was found successfully.

You also can find the files by size using the following syntax where is the main directory containing the subdirectories and the is the size of the files that you can list with their full path.

The following example describes how to find the 10 MB size files. You can replace the M defining units in MB with c for bytes, w for two two byte words, k for kibytes and G for gibibytes (note units are case sensitive).

To find the 10 mebibytes files, execute the following command:

All 10M files were properly listed with their paths.

The syntax to find the files based on their permissions is shown in the following:

Let’s assume that you want to identify and list the files with read, write, and executing permissions (777). The command to run is the following:

The last example of this tutorial shows how to find and list the files and directories by size.

As shown, the files are listed by size with proper units. The 0 size directories and files are empty.

Conclusion

Linux versatility and flexibility allows to find the files (and other functions) recursively in many ways. They can easily be executed by all the Linux users independently of his knowledge level, from the new users to the system administrators. All techniques previously described are valid for all the Linux distributions and even to some Unix systems. According to their man pages, some flags may vary in some distributions, but most of them are universal. In case your Linux distribution does not match any of the previously explained commands, you can read the man page. It is highly recommended to the readers to practice the examples to incorporate this knowledge.

Thank you very much for reading this Linux tutorial. Keep following us for more Linux professional tips.

About the author

David Adams

David Adams is a System Admin and writer that is focused on open source technologies, security software, and computer systems.

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