How to Find Files in Linux Terminal (Find Command)

In this article we are going to shows how to find Files and Directories in Linux Terminal using find command.  If you want to learn about find command in Linux with Examples then this post is ideal for you.

The find command is a powerful and one of the most used command-line utility in the Linux system that is used to search or locates the files and directories based on a user-specified expression and then applies user requested action on each matched file.

The find command also allows you to search the files and directories based on their type, date, ownership, size, permissions and many more.

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How to Find Files in Linux Terminal

In the Linux, the basic syntax of the find command command is show as below:

find [options] [path...] [expression]

Here:

• options – Treat the symbolic links, debugging options, and optimization method.
• path… – Defines the directory or directories where find command will search the files.
• expression – Defines the search patterns, options and actions separated by operators.

For an Example:

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

• The -L (options) – It tells the find command to follow symbolic links.
• The /var/www (path…) – Specifies the directory where find command will search the given files.
• The -name "*.js (expression) –  It tells the find command for searching files ending with .html.

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Find Files by Name

If you want to find the file by name, use the -name option with the name of the file that you want to search:

find /home/studiesonline -type f -name articles.pdf

The command above will search for a file named articles.pdf in the /home/studiesonline directory.

To search the file by name and ignoring the case-sensitive, replace the -name option with -iname as show below:

find /home/studiesonline -type f -iname articles.pdf

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Find Files by Name in Current Directory

To find the file in a current working directory, run the command below:

find . -name filename.txt

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Find Files by Extension

If you want to find the file by extension, run the command below:

find /home/studiesonline -type f -name '*.pdf'

The command above will find all the files ending with .pdf in the /home/studiesonline directory.

You can reverse the above expression by adding -not option. For an example, if you want to find all files that don’t ending with *.pdf. To do that run the command below:

find /home/studiesonline -type f -not -name '*.pdf'

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Find Files by Type

If you want to search files by their specific file types like directories, regular files or symlinks, use the -type option with the below descriptors to specify the file type:

• f: regular file
• d: directory
• l: symbolic link
• c: character devices
• b: block devices
• p: named pipe (FIFO)
• s: socket

For an example, if you want to find all the regular file in the current working directory , run the command below:

find . -type d

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Find Files by Size

If you want to search files by size, use -size option with the size criteria. Below are the suffixes to specify the file size:

• b: 512-byte blocks (default)
• c: bytes
• w: two-byte words
• k: Kilobytes
• M: Megabytes
• G: Gigabytes

Run the command below to find all files of exactly 5M from the /home/studiesonline/data directory:

find /home/studiesonline/data -type f -size 5M

If you want to search for all files which are greater than 1M and less than to 3M(within a size range) from the current working directory. To do that run the command below:

find . -type f -size +2M -size -3M

To search for all files which are less than 2MB inside the current working directory, run the command below:

find . -type f -size -2M

Same as above, if you want to search for all files which are greater than 2MB inside the current working directory, run the command below:

find . -type f -size +2M

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Find Files by Modification Date

The find command also allows you to search the files by their last modification, access, or change time. To search for all .html files inside the /var/www/html directory which has been modified in the last 20 days, run the command below:

find /var/www/html -name "*.html" -mtime 20

Another example using -daystart option:

find /home/studiesonline -mtime +20 -daystart

The command above will display the all files from the /home/studiesonline directory which were modified 20 or more days ago.

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Find Files by Owner

If you want to search for the files which are owned by a particular user or group. To do that, use the -user and -group options with the find command as show below:

find / -user studiesonline

The command above will search for all files and directories that are owned by the user studiesonline.

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Find and Delete Files

You can also delete the all matched files using the -delete option at the end of the match expression:

find /var/www/html/temp/ -name '*.tmp' -delete

The command above will delete all the files ending with .tmp from the /var/www/html/temp directory. 

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That’s all.

If you face any error and issue in above steps , please use comment box below to report.