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DrStalker
Asked: 2010-03-16 20:22:48 +0800 CST

Linux: using find to locate files older than <date>

  • 772

find has good support for finding files the more modified less than X days ago, but how can I use find to locate all files modified before a certain date?

I can't find anything in the find man page to do this, only to compare against another files time or to check for differences between created time and now. Is making a file with the desired time and comparing against that the only way to do this?

linux shell find

9 Answers

  1. No, you can use a date/time string.

    From man find:

    -newerXY reference
    Compares the timestamp of the current file with reference. The reference argument is normally the name of a file (and one of its timestamps is used for the comparison) but it may also be a string describing an absolute time. X and Y are placeholders for other letters, and these letters select which time belonging to how reference is used for the comparison.

              a   The access time of the file reference
          B   The birth time of the file reference
          c   The inode status change time of reference
          m   The modification time of the file reference
          t   reference is interpreted directly as a time

    Example:

    find -newermt "mar 03, 2010" -ls
find -newermt yesterday -ls
find -newermt "mar 03, 2010 09:00" -not -newermt "mar 11, 2010" -ls
    • 78

  2. Not directly related to question, but might be interesting for some that stumble here.

    find command doesn't directly support -older parameter for finding files older than some required date, but you can use negate statement (using accepted answer example):

    touch -t 201003160120 some_file
find . ! -newer some_file

    will return files older than provided date.

    • 47
  3. Best Answer

    If you have only '-newer file' then you can use this workaround:

    # create 'some_file' having a creation date of 16 Mar 2010:
touch -t 201003160120 some_file

# find all files created after this date
find . -newer some_file

    man touch:

      -t STAMP
          use [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] instead of current time

    Assuming that your touch has this option (mine is touch 5.97).

    • 35 
  4. find <dir> -mtime -20

    this find command will find files modified within the last 20 days.

    • mtime -> modified (atime=accessed, ctime=created)
    • -20 -> lesst than 20 days old (20 exactly 20 days, +20 more than 20 days)

    You acan add additional limitations like:

    find <dir> -mtime -20 -name "*.txt"

    the same as before, but only finds files ending with '.txt'.

    • 16

  5. Just to add on - you may even use two newermt arguments to search in a time interval:

    find ! -newermt "apr 01 2007" -newermt "mar 01 2007" -ls

    to find all files from march 2007.

    • 7 
  6. find ! -newermt “<DATE>”

    like this:

    find ! -newermt “jan 01 2015”

    This will give you files older than 01-01-2015 in your current directory.

    https://muzaffarmahmoodblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/11/linux-command-to-remove-files-older-than-2015-in-a-directory/

    • 5

  7. You could use a script like this

    #!/bin/bash

if [ $# -ne 1 ];then
  when="today"
else
  when=` date -d "$1" +"%s" `
fi
now=`date +"%s"`

seconds=`echo "$when - $now" | bc`
minutes=`echo "$seconds / 60 " | bc `

find . -cmin $minutes -print

    Save it in your $PATH as "newerthan" and make it executable.

    Then you can find file modified after a certain date like this:

    newerthan "2010-03-10"

    or

    newerthan "last year"

    or 

    newerthan "yesterday"

    That should do what you want. I don't think there is a built in way to achieve this otherwise.

    • 1

  8. if your date is formatted such that its ok for comparison, 

    mydate=201003160120
find . -type f -printf "%AY%Am%Ad%AH%AM%AS/:%p\n" | awk -vd="$mydate" -F'/:' '$1 > d{ print $2 }'
    • 0 
  9. find <dir> -mtime +20

    Is the correct answer to this question (find files modified before the last 20 days).

    • 0