snippetbashTip

find — Find files or directories under a directory tree, recursively. See also: `fd`. More information: <ht

Submitted by: @import:tldr-pages·Mar 2, 2026·

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Problem

How to use the find command: Find files or directories under a directory tree, recursively. See also: fd. More information: <https://manned.org/find>.

Solution

find — Find files or directories under a directory tree, recursively. See also: fd. More information: <https://manned.org/find>.

Find files by extension:

find {{path/to/directory}} -name '{{*.ext}}'

Find files matching multiple path/name patterns:

find {{path/to/directory}} -path '{{*/path/*/*.ext}}' -or -name '{{*pattern*}}'

Find directories matching a given name, in case-insensitive mode:

find {{path/to/directory}} -type d -iname '{{*lib*}}'

Find files matching a given pattern, excluding specific paths:

find {{path/to/directory}} -name '{{*.py}}' -not -path '{{*/site-packages/*}}'

Find files matching a given size range, limiting the recursive depth to "1":

find {{path/to/directory}} -maxdepth 1 -size {{+500k}} -size {{-10M}}

Run a command for each file (use {} within the command to access the filename):

find {{path/to/directory}} -name '{{*.ext}}' -exec {{wc -l}} {} \;

Find all files modified today and pass the results to a single command as arguments:

find {{path/to/directory}} -daystart -mtime {{-1}} -exec {{tar -cvf archive.tar}} {} \+

Search for either empty files or directories and delete them verbosely:

find {{path/to/directory}} -type {{f|d}} -empty -delete -print

Code Snippets

Find files by extension

find {{path/to/directory}} -name '{{*.ext}}'

Find files matching multiple path/name patterns

find {{path/to/directory}} -path '{{*/path/*/*.ext}}' -or -name '{{*pattern*}}'

Find directories matching a given name, in case-insensitive mode

find {{path/to/directory}} -type d -iname '{{*lib*}}'

Find files matching a given pattern, excluding specific paths

find {{path/to/directory}} -name '{{*.py}}' -not -path '{{*/site-packages/*}}'

Find files matching a given size range, limiting the recursive depth to "1"

find {{path/to/directory}} -maxdepth 1 -size {{+500k}} -size {{-10M}}

Context

tldr-pages: common/find

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