lab-report-5.md

Lab Report 5

Find Command Options

Search for a specific type: -type

Searches for files of a specific type.
d is for directories, f for regular files, l for symbolic links, and c for character devices.

$ find written_2 -type d

written_2
written_2/non-fiction
written_2/non-fiction/OUP
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Berk
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Rybczynski
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Kauffman
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Fletcher
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Castro
written_2/travel_guides
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz2

• Here, find returns all the subdirectories of written_2 and all of its subdirectories, with type -d which can be useful in seeing directories hidden deep within a folder.

Another example:

$ find written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy -type f 

written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy/ch2.txt
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy/ch3.txt
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy/ch1.txt
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy/ch7.txt
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy/ch6.txt
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy/ch8.txt
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy/ch9.txt
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy/ch15.txt
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy/ch14.txt

• Here, I searched for only files with -type f. This can be useful to list all the files in a directory, without listing its subdirectories.

Searching by last modified time: -mtime

Searches for files based on their modification time

• Can be useful to find recently editted files.

$ find written_2 -mtime -7
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz2/Cuba-History.txt

• -mtime -7 attempts to search for files editted in the last 7 days. This shows that I recently editted the file Cuba-History.txt.
• Makes it easy to see files changed within a directory.

$ find written_2 -mtime +7
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz2/Cuba-History.txt

written_2
written_2/non-fiction
written_2/non-fiction/OUP
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Berk
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Berk/ch2.txt
...

#Continues to list all the files and subdirectories of written_2

• Since most files have not been editted recently, all files except for Cuba-History.txt is listed with the extra option of mtime +7, indicating the find command to search for everything last editted in more than 7 days.

Search by size: -size

Searches for files by size

• Here's an example:

$ find written_2 -size +200k

written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1/WhereToItaly.txt
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1/WhereToFrance.txt
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz2/Canada-WhereToGo.txt

• This looks for all files greater than 200 kilobytes, which returns only 3 files.

• Another example, but this time with -

$find written_2 -size -800c

written_2
written_2/non-fiction
written_2/non-fiction/OUP
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Berk
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Abernathy
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Rybczynski
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Kauffman
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Fletcher
written_2/non-fiction/OUP/Castro
written_2/travel_guides
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1/HandRIbiza.txt

• This returns everything less than 800 bytes (bytes represented with c).
• This can be useful to find extremely large or small files within a directory.

Setting a maximum depth: -maxdepth

Searches recursively only to a certain defined depth of sub-directories (including itself)

$ find written_2 -maxdepth 2 -name '*.txt'

#returns nothing

• In this case, there are no files within written_2 and its immediate subdirectories, so there is nothing returned.

$ find written_2 -maxdepth 3 -name '*.txt'

written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1/HandRLasVegas.txt
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1/HistoryJapan.txt
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1/IntroMalaysia.txt
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1/HandRIstanbul.txt
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1/HistoryJamaica.txt
written_2/travel_guides/berlitz1/HandRJamaica.txt
#continues with all files...

• In this case, all the files are within 3 directories deep, so they are all returned.

• This can be useful to limit searching in deep folders that will take up a lot of time and compute.