Ubuntu – How to find files between two dates using “find”

command linefind

I have an email account that has passed 60GB of emails, and currently I'm having a lot of trouble using an email client to archive emails of last year (2011).

Via terminal, I am trying to use find to locate the files between 2011-01-01 and 2011-12-31, but no avail.

How can I find files between two dates?

^{If relevant, the end goal will be a batch that will move each file found, matching the date interval, to a folder.}

Best Answer

You can use this script:

#!/bin/bash
for i in $(find Your_Mail_Dir/ -newermt "2011-01-01" ! -newermt "2011-12-31"); do
  mv $i /moved_emails_dir/
done

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to remove files modified between particular dates

The command GNU find is the way to go. For example, to delete all files in the current directory between 1 and 5 august, you can use the following command

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -newermt 2011-08-01 ! -newermt 2011-08-06 -delete

It is better to execute the command without the -delete action, first, to see the listing of interested files (a good substitute could be -ls that produce an ls-like listing).

Removing the -maxdepth 1 specification will traverse all subdirectories, too.

You can also specify hours, for example

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -newermt '2011-08-01 10:01:59' \
                         ! -newermt '2011-08-06 23:01:00' -delete

Be warned to not remove single quotes, that protect spaces between date and time.

The character ! is a negation, it should be read: newer that this date but not newer that this other date.

Ubuntu – find files and print info

Just use -printf parameter with proper arguments:

$ find -name "*hack*" -printf '%m %p %a\n'
644 ./hack881663129.txt Sat Feb 16 02:27:16.0189270840 2013
644 ./hack881663129_7.txt Sat Feb 16 05:30:12.0673185691 2013
644 ./hack881663129_5.txt Sat Feb 16 05:24:57.0441188136 2013
644 ./hack881663129_4.txt Sat Feb 16 05:22:21.0209189346 2013
664 ./hack881663129_4_7.txt Wed Feb 20 11:09:49.0786644191 2013
644 ./hack881663129_6.txt Sat Feb 16 05:26:49.0297187267 2013
664 ./hack881663129_1_6.txt Mon Feb 18 11:40:05.0991189262 2013
644 ./hack881663129_8.txt Sat Feb 16 05:31:37.0689185031 2013

See man find and search for -printf for other placeholders.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – How to remove files modified between particular dates

Ubuntu – find files and print info

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