This question already has answers here:
Unix find command, what are the {} and \; for?
(5 answers)
Closed 10 years ago.
Noob question
For example:
find /home/user/demo -type f -perm 777 -print -exec chmod 755 {} \;
I think I understand what this code does - it changes file permissions from 777 to 755 recursively. But I don't understand where the {} \; comes from. Is that bit part of exec or find or what?
Thanks for any help.
The curly brackets are placeholders used by the find command to know where to insert the file name of the file it is currently working with.
The find command looks for a ";" to show where the command it must execute for every file ends.
We put a \ in front of it (called escaping) so the shell(ie. bash) wont interpret it, and hide it from find.
Related
This question already has answers here:
Linux find and delete files but redirect file names to be deleted
(5 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
So im using the script
find /path/to/files/* -mtime +60 -exec rm {} \;
How can i collect the deleted files and transfer them into a logfile in Bash script
You could do something like:
find /path/... -print ... | tee -a <log.file>
The -print will print out all the hits, and the tee will append that to some log.file.
Side note: the * at the end of your /path/to/files/* seems superfluous.
Side note2: if you just want to delete the files, find has a built-in -delete.
This question already has answers here:
Moving multiple files having spaces in name (Linux)
(3 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I have a find command which returns two files. Is there anyway of then copying those files to another directory? My find command is below if that will help.
find "$TEST" -iname "DTWD_????.JPG" -printf "%f\n"
New to linux, thanks.
You just need to use the -exec argument
find "$TEST" -iname "DTWD_????.JPG" -printf "%f\n" -exec mv -t '/home' '{}' +
This question already has answers here:
find files older than X days in bash and delete
(3 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I have a server which creates several log files in the log directory. Due to this logging mechanism it eats up a lot of disk space on my server. I want to write a script that deletes all the files that are older than one day and keep the latest ones.
I am able to list the directories in sorted form using ls -trl command. But I am not able to understand how to remove these files. Please help.
You can use the following command:
/usr/bin/find <Your Log Directory> -mtime +1 | xargs rm -f
mtime - provides the file modification time.
+1 - indicates greater than one day.
Try using rm and find command like:
find . -mmin +$((60*24)) -exec rm {} \;
You don't want ls, you want find.
It has a neat argument, -mtime, that limits the results to a specific time delta, and -exec which allows you to provide a command to run on the results.
So for example,
find -mtime +10 -name "*tmp*" -exec rm {} \;
Does an rm on all files older than 10 days, with tmp in the name.
Oh, and be careful.
Very careful.
find . -mtime +1 -exec rm {} \;
This question already has answers here:
Why are the backslash and semicolon required with the find command's -exec option?
(2 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
This is a relatively simple command, so if a duplicate exists and someone could refer me, I'm sorry and I'll delete/close this question.
Man page for find
find . -type f -exec file '{}' \;
Runs 'file' on every file in or below the current directory. Notice that the braces are enclosed in single quote marks to protect them from interpretation
as shell script punctuation. The semicolon is similarly protected by the use of a backslash, though ';' could have been used in that case also.
I do not understand the notation \;. What in the world is that?
In the find command, the action -exec is followed by a command and that command's arguments. Because there can be any number of arguments, find needs some way of knowing when it ends. The semicolon is what tells find that it has reached the end of the command's arguments.
Left to their own devices, most shells would eat the semicolon. We want that semicolon to be passed to the find command. Therefore, we escape it with a backslash. This tells the shell to treat the semicolon as just one of the arguments to the find command.
MORE: Why not, one may ask, just assume that the exec command's argument just go to the end of the line? Why do we need to signal an end to the exec command's arguments at all? The reason is that find has advanced features. Just for example, consider:
find . -name '*.pdf' -exec echo Yes, we have a pdf: {} \; -o -exec echo No, not a pdf: {} \;
This question already has answers here:
How to delete files older than X hours
(9 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I need to ensure that I have no old files left in my directory so what I think I do is
find . -type f -mtime +1 -delete
i got that from the find man page but then
find . -type f -mtime +1 -exec /bin/rm
but again, now told that find: -exec requires an argument - didn't iI pass this. So I started Googling and I found that my command needs to look likee this:
find . -type f -mtime +1 -exec /bin/rm -f {} +
and now I'm just wondering what the two {} s and the + sign are for. Can anyone help me here?
Thanks!
The {} stands for the name of the file(s) found.
The + sign (instead of a ;) means that this command accepts multiple file names in the same command, so that find can run much faster because it is run less times. The number of files added to each execution of the command is limited by the maximum length of the command line find is willing to use.