Find

Find is used to search the directory system for files.

find location options search pattern

find /home myfile.txt This will look in the /home folder for myfile.txt (if you leave out the location, find will look in the directory you are currently in.)

By Name

By default, find is case-sensitive. The above example will not find MYFILE.TXT. The -iname flag tells find to ignore case.

If you want the search to be case insensitive:

find -iname myfile.txt

The above will find all of the following: myfile.txt MYFILE.TXT MyFile.txt (etc...)

By Type

find -type f -name "*.txt" This will find all the files whose name ends in .txt in the current directory.

The -type f flag tells find to look for files ( -type d will tell find to look for directories.)

By Permission

You can have find files based on permissions:

find . -type f -perm 644 This will find files in the current directory with 0777 permissions

. look in the current directory

-type f look for files

-perm 644 look for permissions. What permissions? 644 (-rw-r--r--)

More Examples of finding by permissions:

find -type f ! -perm 777 Look for anything that does NOT have 777 permissions

find / -perm /u=r Find read-only files. (Find -perm uses the same conventions as chmod )

Find and Execute

The -exec flag will make find do something to what it finds.

References

1. find man page
2. Tecmint find Examples