Linux finding file names

How to only get file name with Linux ‘find’?

In GNU find you can use -printf parameter for that, e.g.:

find /dir1 -type f -printf "%f\n" 

@Urchin No reason it shouldn’t so long as you have correct logic (i.e. -o has lower precedence than implied -a , so you will often want to group your -o arguments)

I don’t think this is the right answer. find -printf «%f\n» -exec echo <> \; reveals that the original filename is passed forward

If your find doesn’t have a -printf option you can also use basename:

find ./dir1 -type f -exec basename <> \; 

Use -execdir which automatically holds the current file in <> , for example:

find . -type f -execdir echo '<>' ';' 

You can also use $PWD instead of . (on some systems it won’t produce an extra dot in the front).

If you still got an extra dot, alternatively you can run:

find . -type f -execdir basename '<>' ';' 

-execdir utility [argument . ] ;

The -execdir primary is identical to the -exec primary with the exception that utility will be executed from the directory that holds the current file.

When used + instead of ; , then <> is replaced with as many pathnames as possible for each invocation of utility. In other words, it’ll print all filenames in one line.

If you are using GNU find

Or you can use a programming language such as Ruby(1.9+)

If you fancy a bash (at least 4) solution

shopt -s globstar for file in **; do echo $; done 

If you want to run some action against the filename only, using basename can be tough.

find ~/clang+llvm-3.3/bin/ -type f -exec echo basename <> \; 

will just echo basename /my/found/path . Not what we want if we want to execute on the filename.

But you can then xargs the output. for example to kill the files in a dir based on names in another dir:

cd dirIwantToRMin; find ~/clang+llvm-3.3/bin/ -type f -exec basename <> \; | xargs rm 

find /dir1 -type f -exec basename <> \; 

As others have pointed out, you can combine find and basename , but by default the basename program will only operate on one path at a time, so the executable will have to be launched once for each path (using either find . -exec or find . | xargs -n 1 ), which may potentially be slow.

If you use the -a option on basename , then it can accept multiple filenames in a single invocation, which means that you can then use xargs without the -n 1 , to group the paths together into a far smaller number of invocations of basename , which should be more efficient.

find /dir1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 basename -a 

Here I’ve included the -print0 and -0 (which should be used together), in order to cope with any whitespace inside the names of files and directories.

Here is a timing comparison, between the xargs basename -a and xargs -n1 basename versions. (For sake of a like-with-like comparison, the timings reported here are after an initial dummy run, so that they are both done after the file metadata has already been copied to I/O cache.) I have piped the output to cksum in both cases, just to demonstrate that the output is independent of the method used.

$ time sh -c 'find /usr/lib -type f -print0 | xargs -0 basename -a | cksum' 2532163462 546663 real 0m0.063s user 0m0.058s sys 0m0.040s $ time sh -c 'find /usr/lib -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 basename | cksum' 2532163462 546663 real 0m14.504s user 0m12.474s sys 0m3.109s 

As you can see, it really is substantially faster to avoid launching basename every time.

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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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