How to find files in Linux

Search the filesystem for files that match criteria. find walks the tree in real time; locate is instant but reads a periodically updated database.

# By name (case-insensitive)
find /var -iname '*.log'

# By type, modified in the last 24 hours
find /home -type f -mtime -1

# Bigger than 100 MB, one filesystem only
find / -xdev -type f -size +100M

# Run a command on each match (-delete would remove them)
find /tmp -type f -name '*.tmp' -exec ls -l {} \;

# Instant name search (updatedb populates the database)
locate nginx.conf