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Find Files Modified in last N Minutes

I’ve been using Bash’s find command a lot more regularly lately. I’ve always been scared off by its syntax, but it’s great once you’ve learned it.

Today I learned how to filter the results by files changed in the last N minutes: the cmin flag:

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 -cmin [-|+]n
 True if the difference between the time of last change of file
 status information and the time find was started, rounded up to
 the next full minute, is more than n (+n), less than n (-n), or
 exactly n minutes ago.

For example:

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find . -cmin +5 # Files modified more than 5 minutes ago
find . -cmin -5 # Files modified less than than 5 minutes ago
find . -cmin  5 # Files modified exactly 5 minutes ago
Last updated on Feb 26, 2024 09:22 -0500
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