17.13 Searching for Files by Type

If you are only interested in files of a certain type, use the -type argument, followed by one of the characters in Table 17.1 [some versions of find don't have all of these -JP  ].

Table 17.1: find -type Characters

Character	Meaning
b	Block special file ("device file")
c	Character special file ("device file")
d	Directory
f	Plain file
l	Symbolic link
p	Named pipe file
s	Socket

Unless you are a system administrator, the important types are directories, plain files, or symbolic links (i.e., types d , f , or l ).

Using the -type operator, another way to list files recursively is:

xargs	% find . -type f -print | xargs ls -l

It can be difficult to keep track of all the symbolic links in a directory. The next command will find all the symbolic links in your home directory and print the files that your symbolic links point to. [ $NF gives the last field of each line, which holds the name a symlink points to. -JP ] If your find doesn't have a -ls operator, pipe to xargs ls -l as above.

% 

find $HOME -type l -ls | awk '{print $NF}'