FIND2PERL(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide FIND2PERL(1)
find2perl - translate find command lines to Perl code
find2perl [paths] [predicates] | perl
find2perl is a little translator to convert find command
lines to equivalent Perl code. The resulting code is typi-
cally faster than running find itself.
"paths" are a set of paths where find2perl will start its
searches and "predicates" are taken from the following list.
"! PREDICATE"
Negate the sense of the following predicate. The "!"
must be passed as a distinct argument, so it may need to
be surrounded by whitespace and/or quoted from interpre-
tation by the shell using a backslash (just as with
using find(1)).
"( PREDICATES )"
Group the given PREDICATES. The parentheses must be
passed as distinct arguments, so they may need to be
surrounded by whitespace and/or quoted from interpreta-
tion by the shell using a backslash (just as with using
find(1)).
"PREDICATE1 PREDICATE2"
True if _both_ PREDICATE1 and PREDICATE2 are true;
PREDICATE2 is not evaluated if PREDICATE1 is false.
"PREDICATE1 -o PREDICATE2"
True if either one of PREDICATE1 or PREDICATE2 is true;
PREDICATE2 is not evaluated if PREDICATE1 is true.
"-follow"
Follow (dereference) symlinks. The checking of file
attributes depends on the position of the "-follow"
option. If it precedes the file check option, an "stat"
is done which means the file check applies to the file
the symbolic link is pointing to. If "-follow" option
follows the file check option, this now applies to the
symbolic link itself, i.e. an "lstat" is done.
"-depth"
Change directory traversal algorithm from breadth-first
to depth-first.
"-prune"
Do not descend into the directory currently matched.
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"-xdev"
Do not traverse mount points (prunes search at mount-
point directories).
"-name GLOB"
File name matches specified GLOB wildcard pattern. GLOB
may need to be quoted to avoid interpretation by the
shell (just as with using find(1)).
"-iname GLOB"
Like "-name", but the match is case insensitive.
"-path GLOB"
Path name matches specified GLOB wildcard pattern.
"-ipath GLOB"
Like "-path", but the match is case insensitive.
"-perm PERM"
Low-order 9 bits of permission match octal value PERM.
"-perm -PERM"
The bits specified in PERM are all set in file's permis-
sions.
"-type X"
The file's type matches perl's "-X" operator.
"-fstype TYPE"
Filesystem of current path is of type TYPE (only
NFS/non-NFS distinction is implemented).
"-user USER"
True if USER is owner of file.
"-group GROUP"
True if file's group is GROUP.
"-nouser"
True if file's owner is not in password database.
"-nogroup"
True if file's group is not in group database.
"-inum INUM"
True file's inode number is INUM.
"-links N"
True if (hard) link count of file matches N (see below).
"-size N"
True if file's size matches N (see below) N is normally
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counted in 512-byte blocks, but a suffix of "c" speci-
fies that size should be counted in characters (bytes)
and a suffix of "k" specifes that size should be counted
in 1024-byte blocks.
"-atime N"
True if last-access time of file matches N (measured in
days) (see below).
"-ctime N"
True if last-changed time of file's inode matches N
(measured in days, see below).
"-mtime N"
True if last-modified time of file matches N (measured
in days, see below).
"-newer FILE"
True if last-modified time of file matches N.
"-print"
Print out path of file (always true). If none of
"-exec", "-ls", "-print0", or "-ok" is specified, then
"-print" will be added implicitly.
"-print0"
Like -print, but terminates with \0 instead of \n.
"-exec OPTIONS ;"
exec() the arguments in OPTIONS in a subprocess; any
occurrence of {} in OPTIONS will first be substituted
with the path of the current file. Note that the com-
mand "rm" has been special-cased to use perl's unlink()
function instead (as an optimization). The ";" must be
passed as a distinct argument, so it may need to be sur-
rounded by whitespace and/or quoted from interpretation
by the shell using a backslash (just as with using
find(1)).
"-ok OPTIONS ;"
Like -exec, but first prompts user; if user's response
does not begin with a y, skip the exec. The ";" must be
passed as a distinct argument, so it may need to be sur-
rounded by whitespace and/or quoted from interpretation
by the shell using a backslash (just as with using
find(1)).
"-eval EXPR"
Has the perl script eval() the EXPR.
"-ls"
Simulates "-exec ls -dils {} ;"
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"-tar FILE"
Adds current output to tar-format FILE.
"-cpio FILE"
Adds current output to old-style cpio-format FILE.
"-ncpio FILE"
Adds current output to "new"-style cpio-format FILE.
Predicates which take a numeric argument N can come in three
forms:
* N is prefixed with a +: match values greater than N
* N is prefixed with a -: match values less than N
* N is not prefixed with either + or -: match only values equal to N
find
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