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Finding Files

2.9 Directories

Here is how to control which directories find searches, and how it searches them. These two options allow you to process a horizontal slice of a directory tree.

Option: -maxdepth levels

Descend at most levels (a non-negative integer) levels of directories below the command line arguments. `-maxdepth 0' means only apply the tests and actions to the command line arguments.

Option: -mindepth levels

Do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than levels (a non-negative integer). `-mindepth 1' means process all files except the command line arguments.

Option: -depth

Process each directory's contents before the directory itself. Doing this is a good idea when producing lists of files to archive with cpio or tar. If a directory does not have write permission for its owner, its contents can still be restored from the archive since the directory's permissions are restored after its contents.

Action: -prune

If `-depth' is not given, true; do not descend the current directory. If `-depth' is given, false; no effect. `-prune' only affects tests and actions that come after it in the expression, not those that come before.

For example, to skip the directory `src/emacs' and all files and directories under it, and print the names of the other files found:

find . -path './src/emacs' -prune -o -print

Option: -noleaf

Do not optimize by assuming that directories contain 2 fewer subdirectories than their hard link count. This option is needed when searching filesystems that do not follow the Unix directory-link convention, such as CD-ROM or MS-DOS filesystems or AFS volume mount points. Each directory on a normal Unix filesystem has at least 2 hard links: its name and its `.' entry. Additionally, its subdirectories (if any) each have a `..' entry linked to that directory. When find is examining a directory, after it has statted 2 fewer subdirectories than the directory's link count, it knows that the rest of the entries in the directory are non-directories (leaf files in the directory tree). If only the files' names need to be examined, there is no need to stat them; this gives a significant increase in search speed.