Linux Find Utility Manual

GNU Linux FindUtils Reference Manual

The GNU Find Utilities are the basic directory searching utilities of the GNU operating system. These programs are typically used in conjunction with other programs to provide modular and powerful directory search and file locating capabilities to other commands.

The tools supplied with this package are:

find - search for files in a directory hierarchy

locate - list files in databases that match a pattern

updatedb - update a file name database

xargs - build and execute command lines from standard input

The find program searches a directory tree to find a file or group of files. It traverses the directory tree and reports all occurrences of a file matching the user's specifications. The find program includes very powerful searching capability.

The locate program scans one or more databases of filenames and displays any matches. This can be used as a very fast find command if the file was present during the last file name database update.

The updatedb program updates the file name database used by the locate program. The file name database contains lists of files that were in particular directory trees when the databases were last updated. This is usually run nightly by the cron system daemon.

The xargs program builds and executes command lines by gathering together arguments it reads on the standard input. Most often, these arguments are lists of file names generated by find.

The Findutils Reference Manual provides beginners with a simple introduction to the basics, and experts will find advanced details they need.

In this you will see the following things below.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 Finding Files

3 Actions

4 File Name Databases

5 File Permissions

6 Date input formats

7 Configuration

8 Reference

9 Common Tasks

10 Worked Examples

11 Security Considerations

12 Error Messages

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