Find files modified in the last N days

If you want to check for files modified in the last N days, you may come across this solution:

find . -type f -ls | awk '{print $(NF-3), $(NF-2), $(NF-1), $NF}' | sort

Problem is, this cuts out filenames with spaces (because $(NF-3) etc. looks through the fields starting from the back of the line), you can start with the front, like so:

find . -mtime -30  -type f -ls | awk '{$1=$2=$3=$4=$5=$6=$7=""; print substr($0,8)}' | sort

This solution shows at the same time how to look for files modified in the last 30 days; it works because all fields before the date field are set to blank, and then what remains is the field $0, which is all of what remains of the line.

The downside of that solution is that it does not include the year. A much easier variant is this:

find . -mtime -30 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -ltr

If you want to expand on this, and put it as a function into your .zshrc, you can do this:

mls() { if [[ $#>0 ]]; then d=$1; shift; find . -mtime -$d $* -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -ltr; else echo Usage: $0 days [further find options]; fi }

This allows you to have a command mls which will list, in the current directory and subdirectories, the files modified the last N days sorted by timestamp; and it also allows you to pass in additional options to find. So for example:

mls 10 -iname "*php"

This would traverse the directory and give you all php files changed during the last 10 days.

Related: [[🧠 Ideaverse/Other/- -|Other]]

Created: 1$=dv.span(dv.current().file.ctime)

Tags: Computershellbash