Linux: using find to locate files older than <date>

find has good support for finding files the more modified less than X days ago, but how can I use find to locate all files modified before a certain date?

I can't find anything in the find man page to do this, only to compare against another files time or to check for differences between created time and now. Is making a file with the desired time and comparing against that the only way to do this?

Solution 1:

If you have only '-newer file' then you can use this workaround:

# create 'some_file' having a creation date of 16 Mar 2010:
touch -t 201003160120 some_file

# find all files created after this date
find . -newer some_file

man touch:

  -t STAMP
          use [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] instead of current time

Assuming that your touch has this option (mine is touch 5.97).

Solution 2:

No, you can use a date/time string.

From man find:

-newerXY reference
Compares the timestamp of the current file with reference. The reference argument is normally the name of a file (and one of its timestamps is used for the comparison) but it may also be a string describing an absolute time. X and Y are placeholders for other letters, and these letters select which time belonging to how reference is used for the comparison.
          a   The access time of the file reference
          B   The birth time of the file reference
          c   The inode status change time of reference
          m   The modification time of the file reference
          t   reference is interpreted directly as a time

Example:

find -newermt "mar 03, 2010" -ls
find -newermt yesterday -ls
find -newermt "mar 03, 2010 09:00" -not -newermt "mar 11, 2010" -ls

Solution 3:

Not directly related to question, but might be interesting for some that stumble here.

find command doesn't directly support -older parameter for finding files older than some required date, but you can use negate statement (using accepted answer example):

touch -t 201003160120 some_file
find . ! -newer some_file

will return files older than provided date.

Solution 4:

find <dir> -mtime -20

this find command will find files modified within the last 20 days.

mtime -> modified (atime=accessed, ctime=created)
-20 -> lesst than 20 days old (20 exactly 20 days, +20 more than 20 days)

You acan add additional limitations like:

find <dir> -mtime -20 -name "*.txt"

the same as before, but only finds files ending with '.txt'.

Solution 5:

Just to add on - you may even use two newermt arguments to search in a time interval:

find ! -newermt "apr 01 2007" -newermt "mar 01 2007" -ls

to find all files from march 2007.