The find command is available on most Linux distro by default, so you do not have to install a package for it.
Find Files by Name in Current Directories
The most obvious way of searching for files is by name. To find a file by name in the current directory, run: If you want to find a file by name that contains both capital and small letters, run: If you want to find a file in the root directory, prefix your search with sudo, which will give you all the permissions required to do so, and also the / symbol, which tells Linux to search in the root directory. Finally, the -print expression displays the directories of your search results. If you were looking for Gzip, you’d type:
Find Files Under Specific Directory
If you want to find files under a specific directory like “/home,” run: If you want to find files with the “.txt” extension under the “/home” directory, run: To find files whose name is “test.txt” under multiple directories like “/home” and “/opt”, run: To find hidden files in the “/home” directory, run: To find a single file called “test.txt” and remove it, run: To find all empty files under the “/opt” directory, run:
Find Directories Using Name
If you want to find all directories whose name is “testdir” under the “/home” directory, run: To file all empty directories under “/home,” run:
Find Files with Certain Permissions
The find command can be used to find files with a specific permission using the perm option. To find all files whose permissions are “777” in the “/home” directory, run: To find all the files without permission “777,” run: To find all read-only files, run: To find all executable files, run: To find all the sticky bit set files whose permissions are “553,” run: To find all SUID set files, run: To find all files whose permissions are “777” and change their permissions to “700,” run:
Find Files and Directories Based on Date and Time
To find all the files under “/opt” which were modified 20 days earlier, run: To find all the files under “/opt” which were accessed twenty days earlier, run: To find all the files under “/opt” which were modified more than 30 days earlier and less than 50 days after: To find all the files under “/opt” which were changed in the last two hours, run:
Find Files and Directories Based on Size
To find all 10MB files under the “/home” directory, run: To find all the files under the “/home” directory which are greater than 10MB and less than 50MB, run: To find all “.mp4” files under the “/home” directory with more than 10MB and delete them using a single command, run: As you can see, the find command is incredibly useful for administering a system, looking through directories to find files, and generally pruning the virtual directory tree in Linux. If you enjoyed this Linux article, make sure you check out some of our other Linux content, like how to use the scp command to securely transfer files, how to use nnn as a file manager in the terminal, and how to fix broken packages.
