find by modification time in Linux CLI - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Find Files by Modification Time

📖 Scenario: You are managing files on a Linux system. Sometimes you need to find files that were changed recently to clean up or back up important data.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use the find command to locate files based on their modification time.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a directory with some files

Set a time threshold variable

Use the find command with the -mtime option

Display the list of files modified within the threshold

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

System administrators often need to find recently changed files to back up or clean up data.

💼 Career

Knowing how to use <code>find</code> with modification time is essential for Linux system management and scripting automation.

1

Create a directory and files

Create a directory called testdir and inside it create three empty files named file1.txt, file2.txt, and file3.txt.

Linux CLI

# Create directory testdir and three files inside
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use mkdir to make a directory and touch to create empty files.

2

Set a modification time threshold

Create a variable called days and set it to 1 to represent files modified within the last 1 day.

Linux CLI

mkdir testdir
touch testdir/file1.txt testdir/file2.txt testdir/file3.txt

# Set days variable to 1
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use days=1 to set the variable.

3

Use find command with modification time

Use the find command to list files in testdir that were modified within the last $days days. Use -mtime -$days option.

Linux CLI

mkdir testdir
touch testdir/file1.txt testdir/file2.txt testdir/file3.txt
days=1

# Use find to list files modified within last $days days
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The -mtime -1 option finds files modified less than 1 day ago.

4

Display the found files

Print the output of the find command that lists files modified within the last $days days.

Linux CLI

mkdir testdir
touch testdir/file1.txt testdir/file2.txt testdir/file3.txt
days=1
find testdir -type f -mtime -$days

# Print the result of find command
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just run the find command to see the list of files.