Find UNIX files modified within a number of days

Contributed by qmchenry  
Tagged: UNIX  

To find all files modified within the last 5 days:

find / -mtime -5 -print

The – in front of the 5 modifies the meaning of the time as “less than five days.” The command

find / -mtime +5 -print

displays files modified more than five days ago. Without the + or -, the command would find files with a modification time of five days ago, not less or more.