[unix] Shell Script — Get all files modified after <date>

I'd rather not do this in PHP so I'm hoping a someone decent at shell scripting can help.

I need a script that runs through directory recursively and finds all files with last modified date is greater than some date. Then, it will tar and zip the file(s) keeping the path information.

This question is related to unix shell

The answer is


If you have GNU find, then there are a legion of relevant options. The only snag is that the interface to them is less than stellar:

  • -mmin n (modification time in minutes)
  • -mtime n (modification time in days)
  • -newer file (modification time newer than modification time of file)
  • -daystart (adjust start time from current time to start of day)
  • Plus alternatives for access time and 'change' or 'create' time.

The hard part is determining the number of minutes since a time.

One option worth considering: use touch to create a file with the required modification time stamp; then use find with -newer.

touch -t 200901031231.43 /tmp/wotsit
find . -newer /tmp/wotsit -print
rm -f /tmp/wotsit

This looks for files newer than 2009-01-03T12:31:43. Clearly, in a script, /tmp/wotsit would be a name with the PID or other value to make it unique; and there'd be a trap to ensure it gets removed even if the user interrupts, and so on and so forth.


I would simply do the following to backup all new files from 7 days ago

tar --newer $(date -d'7 days ago' +"%d-%b") -zcf thisweek.tgz .

note you can also replace '7 days ago' with anything that suits your need

Can be : date -d'yesterday' +"%d-%b"

Or even : date -d'first Sunday last month' +"%d-%b"


You can do this directly with tar and even better:

tar -N '2014-02-01 18:00:00' -jcvf archive.tar.bz2 files

This instructs tar to compress files newer than 1st of January 2014, 18:00:00.


This script will find files having a modification date of two minutes before and after the given date (and you can change the values in the conditions as per your requirement)

PATH_SRC="/home/celvas/Documents/Imp_Task/"
PATH_DST="/home/celvas/Downloads/zeeshan/"

cd $PATH_SRC
TODAY=$(date  -d "$(date +%F)" +%s)
TODAY_TIME=$(date -d "$(date +%T)" +%s)


for f in `ls`;
do
#       echo "File -> $f"
        MOD_DATE=$(stat -c %y "$f")
        MOD_DATE=${MOD_DATE% *}
#       echo MOD_DATE: $MOD_DATE
        MOD_DATE1=$(date -d "$MOD_DATE" +%s)
#       echo MOD_DATE: $MOD_DATE

DIFF_IN_DATE=$[ $MOD_DATE1 - $TODAY ]
DIFF_IN_DATE1=$[ $MOD_DATE1 - $TODAY_TIME ]
#echo DIFF: $DIFF_IN_DATE
#echo DIFF1: $DIFF_IN_DATE1
if [[ ($DIFF_IN_DATE -ge -120) && ($DIFF_IN_DATE1 -le 120) && (DIFF_IN_DATE1 -ge -120) ]]
then
echo File lies in Next Hour = $f
echo MOD_DATE: $MOD_DATE

#mv $PATH_SRC/$f  $PATH_DST/$f
fi
done

For example you want files having modification date before the given date only, you may change 120 to 0 in $DIFF_IN_DATE parameter discarding the conditions of $DIFF_IN_DATE1 parameter.

Similarly if you want files having modification date 1 hour before and after given date, just replace 120 by 3600 in if CONDITION.


You can get a list of files last modified later than x days ago with:

find . -mtime -x

Then you just have to tar and zip files in the resulting list, e.g.:

tar czvf mytarfile.tgz `find . -mtime -30`

for all files modified during last month.


well under linux try reading man page of the find command

man find

something like this should

 find . -type f -mtime -7 -print -exec cat {} \; | tar cf - | gzip -9

and you have it


This should show all files modified within the last 7 days.

find . -type f -mtime -7 -print

Pipe that into tar/zip, and you should be good.


This will work for some number of files. You want to include "-print0" and "xargs -0" in case any of the paths have spaces in them. This example looks for files modified in the last 7 days. To find those modified before the last 7 days, use "+7".

find . -mtime -7 -print0 | xargs -0 tar -cjf /foo/archive.tar.bz2

As this page warns, xargs can cause the tar command to be executed multiple times if there are a lot of arguments, and the "-c" flag could cause problems. In that case, you would want this:

find . -mtime -7 -print0 | xargs -0 tar -rf /foo/archive.tar

You can't update a zipped tar archive with tar, so you would have to bzip2 or gzip it in a second step.