How to use find to search for files created on a specific date

Question

How do I use the UNIX command find to search for files created on a specific date

User · Answer

You could do this   find    -type f -ls  grep  10 Sep    Example     root pbx etc   find  var  -type f -ls   grep  Dec 24  791235    4 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root           29 Dec 24 03 24  var lib prelink full 798227  288 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root       292323 Dec 24 23 53  var log sa sar24 797244  320 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root       321300 Dec 24 23 50  var log sa sa24

User · Answer

cp  ls -ltr   grep  Jun 14    perl -wne  s     s   S     1   print  1     n      some destination dir

User · Answer

It s two steps but I like to do it this way   First create a file with a particular date time   In this case  the file is 2008-10-01 at midnight    touch -t 0810010000  tmp t   Now we can find all files that are newer or older than the above file  going by file modified date   You can also use -anewer for accessed and -cnewer file status changed    find   -newer  tmp t find   -not -newer  tmp t   You could also look at files between certain dates by creating two files with touch  touch -t 0810010000  tmp t1 touch -t 0810011000  tmp t2   This will find files between the two dates  amp  times  find   -newer  tmp t1 -and -not -newer  tmp t2

User · Answer

As pointed out by Max  you can t  but checking files modified or accessed is not all that hard   I wrote a tutorial about this  as late as today  The essence of which is to use -newerXY and   -newerXY   Example  To find all files modified on the 7th of June  2007     find   -type f -newermt 2007-06-07   -newermt 2007-06-08   To find all files accessed on the 29th of september  2008     find   -type f -newerat 2008-09-29   -newerat 2008-09-30   Or  files which had their permission changed on the same day     find   -type f -newerct 2008-09-29   -newerct 2008-09-30   If you don t change permissions on the file   c  would normally correspond to the creation date  though

User · Answer

With the -atime  -ctime  and -mtime switches to find  you can get close to what you want to achieve

User · Answer

find location -ctime time period  Examples of time period    More than 30 days ago  -ctime  30 Less than 30 days ago  -ctime -30 Exactly 30 days ago  -ctime 30

User · Answer

Max  is right about the creation time   However  if you want to calculate the elapsed days argument for one of the -atime  -ctime  -mtime parameters  you can use the following expression  ELAPSED DAYS         date   s  -   date -d  2008-09-24    s      60   60   24 - 1      Replace  2008-09-24  with whatever date you want and ELAPSED DAYS will be set to the number of days between then and today   Update  subtract one from the result to align with find s date rounding    So  to find any file modified on September 24th  2008  the command would be   find   -type f -mtime         date   s  -   date -d  2008-09-24    s      60   60   24 - 1      This will work if your version of find doesn t support the -newerXY predicates mentioned in  Arve  s answer

User · Answer

You can t   The -c switch tells you when the permissions were last changed  -a tests the most recent access time  and -m tests the modification time   The filesystem used by most flavors of Linux  ext3  doesn t support a  creation time  record   Sorry

User · Answer

I found this scriplet in a script that deletes all files older than 14 days   CNT 0 for i in   find -type f -ctime  14   do     CNT   CNT   1     echo -n      gt  gt   PROGRESS   rm -f  i done echo deleted  CNT files  done at   date    H  M  S    gt  gt   LOG   I think a little additional  man find  and looking for the -ctime   -atime etc  parameters will help you here

[bash] How to use 'find' to search for files created on a specific date?

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