Find Tips & Tricks

Common usage:

$ find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
$ find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Using Regular Expressions (regex): If the -name option cannot satisfy your need, remember to use the -regex option, which offers more powerful parttern matching:

$ find . -regex pattern -print

prune option tricks:

$ find . -path '*/.zhigang' -prune -o -type f

is equivalent to:

$ find . \( -path '*/.zhigang' -prune -o -type f \) -print'

ie., -print is added at the outer level; but -o binds lower than -a, thus:

$ find . -path '*/.zhigang' -prune -o -type f -print

is equivalent to:

$ find . -path '*/.zhigang' -prune -o \( -type f -print \)

Exclude some directories when finding files:

$ find / \( -path '/usr' -o -path '/proc' \) -prune -o -name 'httpd.conf' -print
$ find . -maxdepth 1 -type f

Use find to tar part of a tree only: if you are not worried about the tree structure including empty directories:

$ cd A; tar cvf - `find . -type f -print | grep -v  B` | gzip > x.tar.Z

If you do want the full structure apart from B:

$ tar cvf - `find A/* -type d -print | grep -v B` | gzip > x.tar.Z

Or use tar only:

$ tar cvf - --exclude   | gzip -f - > tree.tar.gz

Find SUID/SGID commands:

# find / \( -perm -004000 -o -perm -002000 \) -type f -print
# find / \( -path '/nfs' -prune \) \( -perm -004000 -o -perm -002000 \) -type f -print
# find / -xdev \( -perm -004000 -o -perm -002000 \) -type f -print

Be sure that you are the superuser when you run find, or you may miss SUID files hidden in protected directories.

Find keyword in Kconfigs in Linux kernel source tree:

$ find . -name "Kconfig" -exec grep -H "dmesg" {} \;