Ubuntu – How to find a recent file by date created

command linefilesfindsearch

If I want to find a file by name, I do the following:

find -name app

If I want to find a file by type, I do the following:

find -name app -type d

However, because app is such a generic name, many results show up. I would like to find a directory named app, which was created today. Is there a flag or command to achieve this?

Best Answer

To search the whole filesystem (/) for

  • directories (-type d),
  • called app (-name app),
  • that were modified more recently than one day (i.e., 24 hours) ago (-mtime 0),

...Use:

find / -name app -type d -mtime 0

Source: man find.

In particular see the explanation of the -mtime flag and the "find $HOME -mtime 0" example:

[T]o match -mtime 0, a file will have to have a modification in the past which is less than 24 hours ago.

(Thus the time in days since the file was modified is rounded down to the nearest integer for purposes of being matched by -mtime.)

Creation is considered a form of modification for the purpose of file timestamps, so this will work even if the file's contents weren't altered after it was created. It will also match folders with modification timestamps in the last day that were created earlier, but you probably don't have many such folders whose exact name is app.

When a file was created is not typically stored in the filesystem. But the time at which its metadata were last changed (e.g., name/location, ownership, permissions) is stored. If you prefer to go by that to when the file's contents were modified, use -ctime in place of -mtime:

find / -name app -type d -ctime 0

For both -mtime and -ctime, the original creation of the file qualifies as a modification / status change.

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