Finding Files in a Relative Time Range

The find command allows you to find files within a range of dates. For example, let's say you wish to find all files modified in the past month, and show the file's size, modification date, and pathname. Use this:

find . -type f -mtime -31 -printf '%10s %TY-%Tm-%Td %P\n'

Each flag is described here:

• -type f: restricts results to plain files; no directories or links
• -mtime 31: restricts results to files less than 31 days old
• -printf '%10s %TY-%Tm-%Td %P\n': custom output format to show file size in bytes, modification date, and pathname relative to the directory given to find, which in this example is the current directory (.)

Now if you wanted to find all files modified between 6 months and a year ago, you would use two -mtime N directives like so:

find . -type f -mtime +180 -mtime -365 -printf '%10s %TY-%Tm-%Td %P\n'

The changes from the first command, -mtime +180, and -mtime -365, instruct find to filter out files older (+) than 180 days and younger (-) than 365 days.