GNU/Linux: findutils

Some “find” variations that have been handy

Find and copy:

Copy all files with an .mp4 extension to another location:

  
  find . -type f -iname "*.mp4" -exec cp "{}" /other/location/  \;
  

Find and print:

Print name, path, size, inode, and sha256 hash.

  
  find . -type f -printf  "%f\t %P\t %s\t %i\t " -exec sh -c 'sha256sum "{}" | cut -d " " -f 1 ' \;
  

Print path, name, size, time accessed, time modified and sha256 hash.

  
  find . -type f -printf "%P\t %s\t %a\t %t\t" -exec sh -c 'sha256sum "{}" | cut -d " " -f 1 ' \;
  

Search file content:

Find files that contain a particular string.

  
  find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep "string"
  

Find and convert:

Find all files with a .txt extension and convert them to .doc (LibreOffice required).

  
  find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec soffice --headless --convert-to doc --outdir /output/directory/ "{}" \;
  

Merge all the files with an .mp4 extension that are in the current working directory into a single file (ffmpeg required).

  
  find *.mp4 | sed 's:\ :\\\ :g'| sed 's/^/file /' > fl.txt; ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i fl.txt -c copy output.mp4; rm fl.txt
  

Find and count:

Find and count all .jpeg files.

  
  find . -type f -exec file '{}' \; | grep "JPEG" | wc -l
  

Find by time:

Created after a particular date (mm/dd/yyyy).

  
  find -type f -newerct "09/01/2023" 
  

Created during the last two days.

  
  find . -type f -ctime -2
  

Find by permissions:

Find files that can be executed by anyone.

  
  find . -type f -perm 777