How to find files in Bash?

What are you missing? Write a comment.

Find files by their name in Bash in all subdirectories

find . | grep MyFileName

• It matches all files that contain MyFileName in their name

Find files by their name in Bash in the current directory

ls | grep MyFileName

How to find new files in Bash?

Find files newer than 5 minutes?

find . -mmin -5

Example to find all files that are newer than 5 minutes in the current directory.

• The m in mmin stands for modified
• The min in mmin is used to indicate minutes.
• The - sign means newer than the following number of minutes.

Find files newer than 5 days?

find . -mtime -5

Example to find all files that are newer than 5 days in the current directory.

• The m in mtime stands for modified.
• The time in mtime is used to indicate days.
• The - sign means newer than the following number of days.

How to find old files in Bash?

Find files older than 5 minutes?

find . -mmin +5

Example to find all files that are older than 5 minutes in the current directory.

• The m in mmin stands for modified
• The min in mmin is used to indicate minutes.
• The - sign means older than the following number of minutes.

Find files older than 5 days?

find . -mtime +5

Example to find all files that are older than 5 days in the current directory.

• The m in mtime stands for modified.
• The time in mtime is used to indicate days.
• The - sign means older than the following number of days.

How to find files by size in bash?

Find files smaller than 4Mb

find . -type f -size -4M

Example to find all files that are smaller than 4 Megabytes in the current directory.

• The -type f excludes everything that is not a file (directory, link).
• The - before 4M means to search files smaller than that.
• Other Flags:
  - c Bytes
  - w Kilobytes
  - M Megabytes
  - G Gigabytes

Find files larger than 4Mb

find . -type f -size +4M

Example to find all files that are larger than 4 Megabytes in the current directory.

• The -type f excludes everything that is not a file (directory, link).
• The + before 4M means to search files larger than that.
• Other Flags:
  - c Bytes
  - w Kilobytes
  - M Megabytes
  - G Gigabytes

Find files containing a string in bash

grep -rlI "string in file" .

Example to find files that contain the string “word in file” in all subdirectories.

• The I makes it faster, as it ignores non-text files.
• The r makes it search in all subdirectories
• the l makes it only print the file name. Remove it and it shows the line of the matching string.

How to sort all files in a directory in bash by time?

Sort files the current directory by time

ls -1rt

• Use 1 to show it as a list.
• Use t to sort it according to the modification time.
• Use r to reverse the sorting (the newest at the bottom).

Sort files in all subdirectories by time

find . -printf "%T+ %p\n" | sort | sed 's/^[^ ]* //g'

• The command gfind . -printf “%T+ %p\n” prints the date %T+ and the path %p
• The command sort waits until the first command is done, then sorts the files. Therefore it can be slow to use.
• The command sed ‘s/^[^ ]* //g removes the date by replacing everything from the line beginning ^ , then all non-spaces [^ ]* until the first space.

How to make ‘find’ and ‘grep’ work on Mac?

Step 1: Install Homebrew

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Step 2: Install findutils

brew install findutils

Step 3: use gfind instead of find