find and Access Times

• find can match by inode timestamps
  • -atime when file was last read
  • -mtime when file data last changed
  • -ctime when file data or metadata last changed
• Value given is in days
  • find /tmp -ctime +10
    • files changed more than 10 days ago
• Can use a vlue of minutes
  • -amin
  • -mmin
  • -cmin
  • find /etc -amin -60

Examples of find timestamp-matching criteria are given in the previous Post Find and Numeric Criteria. While the values passed to -atime, -ctime and -mtime are measured in days, there are also corresponding criteria that perform searches in minutes: -amin, -cmin and -mmin. You can evern match access times relative to the timestamps of other files using -anewer, -cnewer and -newer, which tests mtime. For example:

[user@user-pc ~]$ find -newer recent_file.txt

Would list all files with mtimes more recent than that of recent_file.txt. Note that there is no -older argument. To match files older than recent_file.txt you would simply negate the -newer criteria:

[user@user-pc ~]$ find -not -newer recent_file.txt

Remember that the metadata, including all three timestamps, for a file can be manually examined using the stat command.