Find the files that have been changed in last 24 hours

Question

E.g., a MySQL server is running on my Ubuntu machine. Some data has been changed during the last 24 hours.

What (Linux) scripts can find the files that have been changed during the last 24 hours?

Please list the file names, file sizes, and modified time.

You could use http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4561895/how-to-recursively-find-the-latest-modified-file-in-a-directory — vaugham, Apr 18 '13 at 14:40

score 611 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 08 '16 at 18:27

611

To find all files modified in the last 24 hours (last full day) in a particular specific directory and its sub-directories:

find /directory_path -mtime -1 -ls

Should be to your liking

The - before 1 is important - it means anything changed one day or less ago. A + before 1 would instead mean anything changed at least one day ago, while having nothing before the 1 would have meant it was changed exacted one day ago, no more, no less.

edited Dec 08 '16 at 18:27

ArtOfWarfare

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answered Apr 18 '13 at 14:42

Xavjer

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nice! how about last 2 hours? – JackWM Apr 18 '13 at 14:47
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use "-mmin -120" instead of mtime – Xavjer Apr 18 '13 at 14:51
thanks for your answer, but I want to get the return value, if this command got some modified file and if not ? – Spartan Oct 29 '15 at 08:58
Do I understand you correctly, that you want to check a directory if any files within were modified and return a boolean value telling you if there are any? – Xavjer Oct 29 '15 at 09:33
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why the `-` before the numeric value? – EsseTi Feb 19 '16 at 10:30
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The argument to -mtime is interpreted as the number of whole days in the age of the file. -mtime +n means strictly greater than, -mtime -n means strictly less than. – Xavjer Feb 20 '16 at 10:07
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To the reader: don't forget to remove the `-ls` when using in a script – redolent Aug 23 '18 at 00:39

score 69 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 26 '23 at 16:28

Another, more humanist way, is to use -newermt option which understands human-readable time units (see man find and search for -newerXY).

Unlike -mtime option which requires the user to read find documentation to figure our what time units -mtime expects and then having the user to convert its time units into those, which is error-prone and plain user-unfriendly. -mtime was barely acceptable in 1980s, but in the 21st century -mtime has the convenience and safety of stone age tools.

Example uses of -newermt option with the same duration expressed in different human-friendly units:

find /<directory> -newermt "-24 hours" -ls
find /<directory> -newermt "1 day ago" -ls
find /<directory> -newermt "yesterday" -ls

score 51 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 18 '13 at 14:48

You can do that with

find . -mtime 0

From man find:

[The] time since each file was last modified is divided by 24 hours and any remainder is discarded. That means that to match -mtime 0, a file will have to have a modification in the past which is less than 24 hours ago.

score 14 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 24 '16 at 00:01

On GNU-compatible systems (i.e. Linux):

find . -mtime 0 -printf '%T+\t%s\t%p\n' 2>/dev/null | sort -r | more

This will list files and directories that have been modified in the last 24 hours (-mtime 0). It will list them with the last modified time in a format that is both sortable and human-readable (%T+), followed by the file size (%s), followed by the full filename (%p), each separated by tabs (\t).

2>/dev/null throws away any stderr output, so that error messages don't muddy the waters; sort -r sorts the results by most recently modified first; and | more lists one page of results at a time.

You could also use `| less` instead of `| more`, I suppose. – Stephen G Tuggy Dec 07 '16 at 20:29 — Stephen G Tuggy, Dec 07 '16 at 20:29

score 9 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 16 '17 at 19:01

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For others who land here in the future (including myself), add a -name option to find specific file types, for instance: find /var -name "*.php" -mtime -1 -ls

edited Jan 16 '17 at 19:01

jytou

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answered Oct 19 '16 at 18:32

resedasue

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score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 09 '15 at 11:32

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This command worked for me

find . -mtime -1 -print

answered Jul 09 '15 at 11:32

BhandariS

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 02 '22 at 13:36

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Find the files...

You can set type f = file

find /directory_path -type f -mtime -1 -exec ls -lh {} \;

answered Jul 02 '22 at 13:36

Deividson Damasio

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Find the files that have been changed in last 24 hours

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