How to find files on linux OS ( distributions )

If you are working on Linux OS, finding files effectively always a tricky part.

Like find files greater than 500 MB, find files which are created 2 days ago, find and delete all files recursively which are greater than specific date.

Lets learn these simple linux tricks to work with files.

How to find files or directory in Linux?

For Files command: 

find /path/to/directory -name "*.txt" -type f

For Directory

find /path/to/directory -name "nameOfDirectory" -type d

In the above commands only type argument is changed from f to d. f represents for file and d represents for directory.

How to find files which are greater than specific size?

find /path/to/directory -type f -size +1024M

How to find files which are created after number of days?

find /path/to/directory -mindepth 1 -mtime +5 -size +700M

How to delete files after finding files?

Method 1:

find /path/to/directory -mindepth 1 -mtime +5 -size +700M -delete

–mindepth is for level

–mtime for number of days

–size is for file size greater than or equal to.

Method 2:

find . -name "*.done" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f

How to find files and set permission to 644 or 664?

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0644

How to find all directory and set permission to 755 or 775?

find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0755

This is how you can work with find command. You can always check for man for more arguments.