find command

[Victor_5]

I only want to list the files of April, when I run

find . -atime -17 -exec ls -al {} \;

It returned everything not only April but also Jan. Feb...., what is the correct command to find those files only in April?

[Helen French]

Hi Victor:

Use '-mtime' option:

# find . -mtime -17 -exec ls -al {} \;

HTH,
Shiju

[Darrell Allen · Accepted solution]

Hi Victor,

Use reference files and "newer" logic:

touch 03312359 /tmp/Mar
touch 05010000 /tmp/May
find . -type f -newer /tmp/Mar -a ! -newer /tmp/May

Darrell

[Mark van Hassel]

Hi,

atime means acces time. You should try mtime (file modification time).

HtH,

Mark

[S.K. Chan]

You can do thie .. create a dummy reference file dated April 01 00:01 and use find command to list all files newer than that reference file.
Eg : in /opt

# cd /opt
# touch 04010001 ref-file
# find . -newer ref-file -exec ls -al {} \;

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi:

The find command is returning just what you asked. Find all the files that have been ACCESSED (-atime) in the past 17 days butr the ls command is displaying the modification times. It is entirely possible that a file has been recently accessed but last modified months ago. You probably want to use the find -mtime argument instead.

[Darrell Allen]

Hi again,

Should have said that you don't need the "-a ! -newer May" if you are checking for the current month"

find . -type f -newer /tmp/Mar

Darrell

[John Palmer]

It could also be that you are listing the contents of directories that have been selected by find.

If you are only interested in files then supply '-type f' to find or you could suppress the listing of the contents of directories with 'ls -ald {}'

Regards,
John

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

ll -R | grep " Apr " should be enough.


There is not reason to do a find followed to ll.

[pap]

Hi USe,

-mtime instead of -atime.

-atime is for accessed files for a particular period of time. This is the reason you are getting all files in your find result which you run the command.

-pap

[Catherine_3]

Hi Victor ,
I think Chan's method can work.

I have a test

You can do thie .. create a dummy reference file dated April 01 00:01 and use find command to list all files newer than that reference file.

#cd /
# touch 04010001 ref-file
# find . -newermm ref-file -print
note m - modified
or
#cd /
# touch 04010001 ref-file
# find . -newermm ref-file -print

try it

[Victor_5]

I missed on switch, -type f, no matter I use -atime -mtime or even -ctime, the output was same, the final command is

find . -type -f -mtime -17 -exec ls -al {} \;

-newer also can work.

Carlos, I like you idea, thanks!

Catherine, thanks a lot!

Thank you, all!