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Accepted
amh
Asked: 2009-05-31 08:51:22 +0800 CST

How to restrict find command search to return only files modified before certain date?

  • 772

I'd like to constrain the following search to only files with a modified date <= "2009-05-29 11:59:00"

find /path -name "*.sb" ! -name "*[^0-9]*.sb"  -type f -print

I'm using CentOS

linux find

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The command find /path -mtime +7 will give you files older than 7 days, and find ! -newer somefile will give you files older than somefile. So...

    touch -d "2009-05-29 11:59:00" timestampfile

find /path -name "*.sb" ! -name "*[^0-9]*.sb" ! -newer timestampfile -type f -print
    • 4

  2. ! -newermt '5/29/2009 23:59:00' should work on BSD; there will be a similar option on GNU.

    • 2 
  3. find /path \
  -type f \
  ! -newermt "20090529 1159:00" \
  -regex "./[^0-9]*.sb$" \
  -print

    You can place the regex at the end to speed up the command (place the fastest actions at the start, slowest at the end).

    • 2

  4. You want -mdate

    find /path -name ".sb" ! -name "[^0-9]*.sb" -type f -print -mdate -2009-05-30

    Here are a couple of examples:

    http://www.softpanorama.org/Tools/Find/selecting_files_by_age.shtml
    http://www.schuerig.de/michael/linux/snippets.html

    • -1