Related: [[../../../2024-10-07 Unix Lecture 4|2024-10-07 Unix Lecture 4]], [[../../../exec-find-unix-command|exec-find-unix-command]], [[./Programming MOC|Programming MOC]]

Summary Difference between find and grep: find is used to find files in one or multiple directories, and grep is used to find content inside files.

Find

powerful search command, searches files in a repo

find repo_to_search [-criteria] [-actions]

important to put -print at the end, to make sure whatever files you’re searching for actually print!
access level - to go through files, find needs access to those files. Otherwise they won’t show up in the search
search files by age, size, owner, file type, timestamp, permissions, and depth within subtree
can also do things to the files themselves

Examples of Find

find all files that start with “A” or “a”, followed by letters or numbers, and end with a number between 3 and 6

find . -iname "a*[3-6]" -print

OR

find . -name "[aA]*[3-6]" -print

find a file that was modified 30 days ago, more than 30 days ago, and less than 30 days ago?

find . -mtime 30 -print

find . -mtime +30 -print

find . -mtime -30 -print

find only directories

find . -type d -print

find a file that was modified less than 12 days ago and is larger than 30K

find . -type f -mtime -12 -size +30 k -print

Find Search Criteria

find -amin n

find files that were accessed n minutes ago find -anewer folder-name
searches most recently access files from folder-name find -atime *n
searches files accessed n days (24 hour period)
just n = exactly n, +n = more than n, and -n = less than n -cmin n -cnewer folder-name -ctime n -mmin n
find files that were modified n minutes -mtime n
find files that were modified n days (24 hour period) -name file-name -iname file-name -size n -user user-name -group group-name -type d/f
d = directory
f = file -empty
search all empty files and directories

Find vs Locate

Bottom line, both are very useful. locate(1) is better when you’re just trying to find a particular file by name, which you know exists, but you just don’t remember where it is exactly. find(1) is better when you have a focused area to examine, or when you need any of its many advantages. ([source](files - locate vs find: usage, pros and cons of each other - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange)

Find vs Grep

The Major difference is FIND is for searching files and directories using filters while GREP is for searching a pattern inside a file or searching process(es)_

FIND is an command for searching file(s) and folder(s) using filters such as size , access time , modification time.

The find command lists all of the files within a directory and its sub-directories that match a set of filters.

This command is most commonly used to find all of the files that have a certain name.

To find all of the files named theFile.txt in your current directory and all of its sub-directories, enter:

find . -name theFile.txt -print

To look in your current directory and its sub-directories for all of the files that end in the extension .txt , enter:

find . -name "*.txt" -print

GREP :(Globally search a Regular Expression and Print) Searches files for a specified string or expression.

Grep searches for lines containing a specified pattern and, by default, writes them to the standard output.

grep myText theFile.txt

Result : Grep will print out each line contain the word myText. source

flashcards

using find, how do you return only files in your search results? // use -type f to specify files
using find, how do you return only directories in your search results? // use -type d to specify directories
what does find . -type d mean? // find all directories in the current directory
what does find . -type f mean? // find all files in the current directory
what does find . "*.c" -print mean? // find all files in current directory that has a c at the end with a character before it and print the results
what does find / -mtime -3 -print mean? // find all files in the entire tree that were modified less than 3 days ago
what’s the difference between find / and find ~ ? // find / looks through all files in the tree, while find ~ looks through all the content in your user account

references/links

note created on 20241130 @ 2100