Find Files or Directory in Linux

Find is a fundamental and extremely powerful tool for working with the files on your Linux system. It can be used on its own to locate files, or in conjunction with other programs to perform operations on those files

The Find Command:

find  [path]  [expression] 

Recursively finds files in path that match expression 

 If no arguments are supplied it find all files in the current directory

Find Options: 
find .  -  For find in current directory  
-name  pattern  -  Find file and directories that match patterns  
-iname  pattern  -  Like - name but ignore case(lower or upper)  
-ls  -   Performs an ls on each of the found items  
-mtime days(like-1, 2, 3)  -  Find files that are days old  
-size num(like- +iM, -1M)  -   Find file that are of size number 
-newer file  -  Find file that are newer than file  
-exec command {} \;  -  Run command against all the files that are found

Lets see Find command in action:

find . -name file.txt

Find files named file.txt

find . -iname file.txt

Find files named file.txt ignoring case

find . -iname file.txt -ls

Performs an ls on each of the found items.

find . -mtime 4

Find files 4 days old

find . -mtime +4 -mtime -9

Find files that are older than 4 days but not older than 9 days. i.e. - 5, 6, 7, 8 days

find /root/Desktop/  -size  +1M

Find files larger than 1 MB

find . -newer  cat.txt

Find files that are newly than cat.txt  

find /root/Desktop/ -exec file {}  \;

Execute file command against all the files that are found