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content/posts/find-to-the-rescue/index.md

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+---
+title: "find to the rescue"
+date: 2023-06-29T22:37:30+02:00
+tags: [find, ubuntu, unix, posix, command line, terminal]
+
+description: "Helps you locate files matching criteria"
+summary: "find has many filters to help you locate the files you're looking for."
+---
+
+`find` is a cool piece of software.
+It basically helps you find (didn't see that coming, huh?) files matching criteria.
+
+## 🕵🏻‍♂️ Basic filters
+One of the most common criteria is `-name`.
+You're looking for a file, but you only remember parts of its name? `find` to the rescue!
+
+```shell
+find . -name "foo*"
+find . -name "*bar*"
+find . -name "*.baz"
+```
+
+You want to discover the files modified in the last five minutes?
+
+```shell
+find . -mmin -5
+```
+
+This recently helped me discover what files Ubuntu created when setting up a keyring, in order to automate the deployment of desktop machines.
+
+{{< note class="info" title="Different implementations" >}}
+There are [differences](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/475020/difference-between-find-and-gnu-find) between implementations present in GNU/Linux and other systems, so your mileage may vary. The commands present in this article work on macOS.
+{{</note>}}
+
+## 🚜 Executing actions & deleting
+Filters can be combined and a special `-exec` filter allows you to create entirely rules.
+It also runs the command on all files, helping you run actions instead of filtering if that's what you're after.
+
+E.g. count the lines of all markdown files with a modification date **older** than 5 days:
+
+```shell
+find . -mtime +5 -type f -name "*.md" -exec wc -l {} +
+```
+
+Special `-exec` rules:
+
+* `{}` is used as a placeholder: the file names will be placed at this position in the command execution.
+* the statement must be terminated by either `\;` or `+`
+  * `\;` will apply the command to a single file at a time
+  * `+` will apply the command to all files at the same time
+
+The escaping before the semicolon is necessary, otherwise shells would interpret it as the end of the command and `find` would complain about the missing character.
+
+Since deleting is a common action, it has its own flag:
+
+```shell
+find . -name "*.pyc" -delete
+```
+
+## 📚 Further reading
+
+I don't think I ever had to use any more filters, but there are a lot more!
+I don't intend on covering them all here, especially since I don't know half of them. RTFM!
+
+```shell
+tldr find
+man find
+```