Find

Find

Symbolic Links

• The -H, -L and -P options control the treatment of symbolic links.
• -P - Never follow symbolic links. This is the default behaviour.
• -L - Follow symbolic links.
• -H - Do not follow symbolic links, except while processing the command line arguments dereference any top-level dirs directly mentioned in the command arguments, otherwise no.

Deleting files

• find . -name "*.sig" | xargs -i rm "{}"
  • used on a linux box when there was spaces in the path
• find . -name "*.foo" -exec rm {} \;
  • note the "{}" token, the escaped semicolon, and the space between them.

Find file by type

• find . -type f -executable
  • only works in GNU
• f - regular file
• d - directory
• l - symbolic link - does not dereference, use -xtype to do that.

Exclude files whose paths match a pattern

• find . -not -path "*git*" -a -not -path "*md*" -a -not -path "*__init__*"
• Dump contents of files to stdout for possible redirection to file:
  • find . -not -path "*git*" -a -not -path "*md*" -a -not -path "*__init__*" -a -not -type d -exec sh -c "echo \"\n\n\n###############\"; echo \"{}\n\"; cat {}" \;

Find based on date

• find . -newerXY
  • find . -neweraa test_file - list all files whose ACCESS time is more recent than access time of test_file
  • find . -newerBa test_file - list all files whose CREATION time is more recent than access time of test_file
  • find . -newerca test_file - list all files whose CHANGE time is more recent than access time of test_file
  • find . -newerma test_file - list all files whose MODIFICATION time is more recent than access time of test_file
  • find . -neweraB test_file - list all files whose access time is more recent than CREATION time of test_file
  • find . -newerac test_file - list all files whose access time is more recent than CHANGE time of test_file
  • find . -neweram test_file - list all files whose access time is more recent than MODIFICATION time of test_file

Find and run an inline shell script

• find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -exec sh -c "echo {}; find {} | wc -l" \;

fd

• fd
• brew install fd
• Simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to find
• Uses regular expressions for the pattern by default
• Change to glob using --glob option
• Excludes hidden files, directories, .gitignore, .ignore by default
• -t - type eg. -t f
• -e - extension
• -x - exec command
• -d --max-depth
• -E, --exclude pattern, e.g., --exclude node_modules