Rowland Industries

find
Category	Command Line Program
Part Of	GNU Core Utilities
Classification	Tier 1
Official Documentation	GNU Find

1 Arguments

List

find Command Arguments and Options
Argument	Argument Options or Value	Description
`-H`		Do not follow symbolic links; except while processing the command line arguments.
`-L`		Follow symbolic links.
`-P`		Do not follow symbolic links; this is the default.
`-D`		Output diagnostic information.
	`exec`	Show debug information related to -exec, execdir, -ok, and -okdir.
	`opt`	Show debug information related to expression tree optimization.
`-Olevel`		Controls the level of query optimisation.
	`0`	This has the same effect as level 1.
	`1`	The default optimization level.
	`2`	-type or -xtype test are performed after any tests based only on the names of files.
	`3`	This is fastest option, use this level when you want to run the find command as fast as possible.
`-files0-from`		This command line argument should be used when you want to give the find command a file that lists the starting points rather than listing the starting points on the command line.
	`[ filepath ]`	The path to the file that contains a list of the starting points you would like to use. This can be either an absolute or relative pathname.
`-version, --version`		Print version information for the `find` program and then exit.
`-xdev`		Exclude directories which are on other filesystems.

2 Examples

2.1 How To Locate A File By Filename

The find command is the best command to use when you want to locate a specific file or get a list of files which all match a particular pattern.

This example demonstrates searching the entire linux system for a file named hosts. The first argument is /etc, this indicates the directory where we want to start our search. The next argument is -name which tells the find command that we are looking for a file based on file name (rather than looking for a directory). The final argument is hosts which is the name of the file we are searching for.

user-1@vm:~$ find /etc -name hosts
/etc/avahi/hosts
find: ‘/etc/lvm/archive’: Permission denied
find: ‘/etc/lvm/backup’: Permission denied
find: ‘/etc/polkit-1/rules.d’: Permission denied
find: ‘/etc/polkit-1/localauthority’: Permission denied
find: ‘/etc/ssl/private’: Permission denied
find: ‘/etc/libvirt/secrets’: Permission denied
find: ‘/etc/cups/ssl’: Permission denied
/etc/hosts
user-1@vm:~$

2.2 How To Elide 'Permission denied' Errors From Output

This example is basically the same the previous example but we filter the search results through grep and remove any search results which include the text Permission denied. So now our results include only matches to our query which is hosts.

user-1@vm:~$ find /etc -name hosts 2>&1 | grep -v 'Permission denied'
/etc/avahi/hosts
/etc/hosts
user-1@vm:~$

2.3 Execute Command Using Results of Find

This example demonstrates how the -exec option works. The -exec option will accept as input a command with zero or more curly brace pairs {}. The curly brace pairs will be replaced with the output from the find command.

Another options which this example takes advantage of is the -type option which is a test used to exclude non-matching file types from the results. In the example below the f option is passed to the -type option which excludes all non-regular files from the results (such as directories, links, etc).

user-1@vm:~$ sudo find / -name ssh.service -type f -exec cat {} \;
[Unit]
Description=OpenBSD Secure Shell server
Documentation=man:sshd(8) man:sshd_config(5)
After=network.target auditd.service
ConditionPathExists=!/etc/ssh/sshd_not_to_be_run

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/ssh
ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/sshd -t
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/sshd -D $SSHD_OPTS
ExecReload=/usr/sbin/sshd -t
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure
RestartPreventExitStatus=255
Type=notify
RuntimeDirectory=sshd
RuntimeDirectoryMode=0755

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Alias=sshd.service
user-1@vm:~$