Linux – Understanding find with atime, ctime, and mtime

Try this:

cd /some/dir && rsync -av --files-from=<(find . -mtime 0 -printf "%p\n") <other stuff>

It uses Process Substitution <( ) to replace the find command with a named fifo and gives that fifo's name to rsync to read as what to include in the sync.

Update

In light of Kyle's answer, it definitely appears that --files-from is more appropriate than --include-from; although both will work. Answer updated

For -daystart the manual says:

-- Option: -daystart

Measure times from the beginning of today rather than from 24 hours ago. So, to list the regular files in your home directory that were modified yesterday, do

find ~/ -daystart -type f -mtime 1

The '-daystart' option is unlike most other options in that it has an effect on the way that other tests are performed. The affected tests are '-amin', '-cmin', '-mmin', '-atime', '-ctime' and '-mtime'. The '-daystart' option only affects the behaviour of any tests which appear after it on the command line.

What that means that if you run:

find . -daystart -mtime 1

on the day after the winter changing time (2015-10-25 in Europe this year), that should give you the files last modified between 2015-10-25 01:00 (the first occurrence of that time) and 2015-10-25 23:59:59.999....

If run as

find . -daystart -mtime 0

on 2015-10-25, you'd expect it to get you the files modified between 00:00 and 22:59:59, but doing a simple test (with findutils 4.4.2) shows that it returns files modified between the first 01:00 and 23:59:59 (unless run before the time change).

$ find . -printf '%TFT%TT %p\n'
2015-09-25T14:28:25.4868761490 .
2015-10-25T00:02:00.0000000000 ./a
2015-10-25T23:43:00.0000000000 ./c
2015-10-25T12:42:00.0000000000 ./b
$ NO_FAKE_STAT=1 faketime -m '2015-10-25 12:23' find . -daystart -mtime 0
./c
./b
$ NO_FAKE_STAT=1 faketime -m '2015-10-25 00:32' find . -daystart -mtime 0
./a
./b
$ NO_FAKE_STAT=1 faketime -m '2015-10-25 12:23' find . -daystart -mtime 1
./a

In any case the statement So, to list the regular files in your home directory that were modified yesterday above is not always true.

Without -daystart, the check is for files modified in units of 24 hours. So if run at 12:43 on 2015-10-25, find . -mtime 0 would give you files modified between 2015-10-24 13:43 and now.

A more reliable way to give you the files that were last modified yesterday would be:

 find . -newermt 'yesterday 0' ! -newermt 'today 0'

Note that it includes the files that were last modified today at 00:00:00.0000000000 and not the ones at that time yesterday. Unfortunately there's no -oldermt predicate.

Note that zsh's age function to use in globs like:

$ autoload age # in ~/.zshrc
$ ls -ld -- *(age,yesterday,)

has similar issues.