finding hidden files

dina3e · 03-27-2008, 08:25 AM

is there any other way i suppose to find out the hidden file in the system other than
ls -a

pixellany · 03-27-2008, 08:30 AM

find <path> -name '.*'

colucix · 03-27-2008, 08:34 AM

The find command retrieves the hidden files, too. If you want to find ONLY the hidden files and directories, you can use the -regex option in this way

Code:

find . -regex '.*/\..*'

Edit: ...or the way pixellany suggested. Indeed, mine is useful when you want to exclude hidden files from the search, as in

Code:

find . \( ! -regex '.*/\..*' \)

dina3e · 03-27-2008, 07:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colucix

The find command retrieves the hidden files, too. If you want to find ONLY the hidden files and directories, you can use the -regex option in this way

Code:

find . -regex '.*/\..*'

Edit: ...or the way pixellany suggested. Indeed, mine is useful when you want to exclude hidden files from the search, as in

Code:

find . \( ! -regex '.*/\..*' \)

yha this works fine but i want to know that any other method or command so that i'll get the hidden file information.

colucix · 03-28-2008, 04:46 AM

Once you have found the hidden files, you can execute any command on each entry. Suppose you have

Code:

$ find . -regex '.*/\..*'
./.hiddenfile_1
./.hiddenfile_2

You can add the -exec option to the find command and get for example

Code:

$ find . -regex '.*/\..*' -exec ls -l {} \;
-rw-r--r-- 1 colucix users 11 Mar 28 10:40 ./.hiddenfile_1
-rw-r--r-- 1 colucix users 20 Mar 28 10:43 ./.hiddenfile_2

$ find . -regex '.*/\..*' -exec file {} \;
./.hiddenfile_1: ASCII text
./.hiddenfile_2: ASCII text

See man find for details.