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Previous: 17.12 Finding Many Things with One Command Chapter 17
Finding Files with find
Next: 17.14 Searching for Files by Size
 

17.13 Searching for Files by Type

If you are only interested in files of a certain type, use the -type argument, followed by one of the characters in Table 17.1 [some versions of find don't have all of these -JP  ].

Table 17.1: find -type Characters
Character Meaning
b Block special file ("device file")
c Character special file ("device file")
d Directory
f Plain file
l Symbolic link
p Named pipe file
s Socket

Unless you are a system administrator, the important types are directories, plain files, or symbolic links (i.e., types d , f , or l ).

Using the -type operator, another way to list files recursively is:



xargs
 

 % 

find . -type f -print | xargs ls -l

It can be difficult to keep track of all the symbolic links in a directory. The next command will find all the symbolic links in your home directory and print the files that your symbolic links point to. [ $NF gives the last field of each line, which holds the name a symlink points to. -JP ] If your find doesn't have a -ls operator, pipe to xargs ls -l as above.

% 

find $HOME -type l -ls | awk '{print $NF}'

- BB


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