UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I am using the korn shell on Solaris box.
Why does the following 2 commands return different results?

This command returns no results (I already used this command to create a list of files which I moved to an archive directory)

Code:

find ????10??_*.dat -type f -mtime +91

However this command returns results (I expected this to return no results since the pattern is the same )

Code:

find . -name '????10??_*.dat' -type f -mtime +91

I know im missing something stupid, I just dont know what!

Thanks in advance.

Your first command will not behave in a "reliable" recursive way.

It will find file like ????10??_*.dat ONLY if they ARE in a directory whose name ALSO match ????10??_*.dat
????10??_*.dat/????10??_*.dat
Otherwise they won't be found.

The first argument of the find command should basically be a PATH if not, the research won't be recursive

check

Code:

 man find

the -name option wait for a filename
whereas the first argument just after "find" is a path

---------- Post updated at 05:28 PM ---------- Previous update was at 05:13 PM ----------

In fact your first command says:

find any filename matching ????10??_*.dat in my current directory (not recursive) that match +91 mtime
find any filname (that are +91 days modified) that are in any directory whose name match ./????10??_*.dat
(and that'not recursive, if a file is in ./foobar/xxxx10xx_xxx.dat, it won't be matched.)


whereas the second command says:

Find recusively from the current directory any file whose name is matching ????10??_*.dat and is modified +91 days.

(maybe i miss some point around those 2 commands , but that is mainly what i understand : in fact the first call is syntaxically not correct (unless the pattern specified match directories)...

The above command syntax is unreliable but may sort of work if the files are in the current directory (because Shell expands the filenames).

The following command would have been safer. The start directory field is "." (current directory). The pattern is in single quotes which means that "find" expands the filenames.

Code:

find . -type f -name '????10??_*.dat' -mtime +91

I have just read ctsgnb's post. The first parameter to "find" is a "pathname list". This can be directory names or filenames but the command will fail if the "pathname list" refers to items which do not exist.
I rarely put a filename in the "pathname" list but it can for example be quick and useful for deciding whether an individual existing file is older than a number of days without searching an entire tree.

The point is : if pathname passed to find is not a directory, the research will not be recursive, it will just display the matching file as is, but not the others that are in subdirectories (... except if the subdirectory itself is matching the given pattern as well)

Hi ctsgnb and methyl,

Thanks for your time and the excellent explanation. D'oh, I knew it would end up being something simple that I was missing .
There were files in a sub directory that matched the pattern.

So this only searches for files matching the pattern in the current directory: Whereas this searches the current directory and all sub-directories for files matching the pattern: Is there a way to make
NOT search any sub-directories - just search the current directory. I have looked at the man page and tried -prune but cant get it to work

If you don't want to search in subdirectories, then you can just leave the find command and use command ls instead

---------- Post updated at 03:42 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:36 PM ----------

Or you can use the -prune option (also have a look at the -depth and/or -maxdepth option of your find command depending on our plateform)

Give a try to

Code:

find ????10??_*.dat -prune -type f -mtime +91

I have to create a file containing a list of files that I have to perform a few actions on.

Unfortunately ls doesnt provide me with a way of getting only files that match a pattern but also by a pre-defined time period. The find command provides me with the -mtime option to find only files modified after a certain length of time.