====== Find ======

**General Information**

The GNU find utility and some useful parsing methods.

**Checklist**
  * Distro(s): Any

----

====== General Syntax ======

The general syntax of find is:

<code bash>
find [options] [path] [expression]
</code>
The [options] allow for how to treat symbolic links, debugging, and optimization.\\
The defaults are almost always used. (see 'man find' if curious)

[path] is the directory in which you are starting the search.

[expression]s are made up of options that manipulate the operation of find.

----

====== Find Examples ======

Some of the useful find commands that have been "tested in production".

----

===== Find folders with the most files =====

If you run into a situation in which you have high inode usage as seen by 'df -i', the following syntax will show folders with the most files:

<code bash>
nice find / -mount -printf '%h\n' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n -k 1
</code>

Explanation:
  * nice = Use nice in a production environment to lower CPU scheduling priority by a default of 10, as find can be CPU intensive
  * find / = start in the "/" directory (change this to the root of a mount point you wish to investigate as identified by 'df -i')
  * mount = Do not descend directories on other file systems.
  * printf '%h\n' = Print the leading directories of a file's name (%h), then a newline (\n). (man find, then search for 'printf\ format' to see all available formats)
  * sort = Default sort by starting of line alphabetical
  * uniq -c = Filter matching adjacent lines, prefix lines with the count of occurrences
  * sort -n -k 1 = Sort numerically (-n) via the "key" (-k) at field 1 (field 1 is the count from 'uniq -c').

This will give output with the first column displaying file count and the second column displaying the folder it is in.

Example Output (last 5 lines):
<code bash>
   1814 /usr/bin
   1983 /usr/share/doc
   2075 /usr/share/man/man3
   2122 /usr/share/linuxmint/mintinstall/installed
   2123 /usr/share/linuxmint/mintinstall/icons
</code>

----

===== Find, starting in /, all files (type f) owned by rjones =====

<code bash>
find / -user rjones -type f
</code>

----

===== Remove all files owned by rjones =====

<code bash>
find / -user rjones -type f -exec rm '{}' \;
</code>

----

===== Find all files modified in the last 3 days =====

<code bash>
find / -mtime -3 -type f
</code>

----