Blogs

I don't write about Unix and Linux very much on this website, but when I just used a Linux find command to find files that had been modified in the last seven days, a friend said I should write a quick blog post about it.

Finding a file that has been modified in X days

Here's a simple Linux find command that shows how to find a file or directory that has been modified in the last seven days:

As a business analyst, I'm always asked how I get from (a) having absolutely nothing but a project charter or mission statement to (b) having a complete design of a software system. People are amazed that just by talking (and working together) we can build a terrific computer software system that meets their needs.

When working as a business analyst several users ago, I had an amazing experience when I very casually asked a client something like, "What requirements do you want to put on passwords for external users?"

Several weeks later we decided what we meant by "external user", had redefined "internal user", learned that their company had at least four different customer applications with four different user databases, and my company gave them a presentation on LDAP systems and identity management.

Now that I have Linux shell accounts on at least seven different servers, I've changed my Bash login prompt on each server so I can easily see what server I'm logged in to. For instance, on my Valley Programming web server, my command prompt looks like this:

VALPRO:/home/al
> _

With this prompt, the "VALPRO" part reminds me that I'm logged into my Valley Programming server, and the path shown to the right of it changes as I move from one directory to another. I actually type my command on the line beneath that, where the underscore character is shown.

Summary: How to use the Linux find command with the grep option, using the find "exec" argument.

One of the really terrific things about the Linux find command is that you can combine it with the regular Linux grep facility. This lets you search for text strings and regular expressions in many directories at one time.

A simple grep command

The Linux grep command lets you search multiple files, so if you're looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, you could issue a grep command like this:

Ever since the C programming language was created, computer programmers have been using the simple statement, "Hello, world", to announce their new programming language, programming tool, or software application. Today I use that same phrase to announce the creation of my new company, Valley Programming.