Linux command line find escape question mark

findlinux

For some reason I would like to delete all files names like "*.jpg?" (the filename is ending with a real ?)

I tried this

find /var/www/ -type f -name "*.jpg\?"

and

find /var/www/ -type f -name "*.jpg?"

but this doesn't work
how can i do that ?

Best Answer

Interestingly both of your commands work on the CentOS 6.5 find 4.4.2 system I have to hand. You can try using single quotes '

find /var/www/ -type f -name '*.jpg?'

If this works and it's available in your find, you can use the -delete argument to find to delete the files. This does away with the need for xargs and print0 and the like. Be sure to be ensure the find command works correctly before adding the the delete though.

Related Solutions

Linux File Permissions – Best Way to Handle Apache 2’s www-data User in /var/www

Attempting to expand on @Zoredache's answer, as I give this a go myself:

Create a new group (www-pub) and add the users to that group

groupadd www-pub

usermod -a -G www-pub usera ## must use -a to append to existing groups

usermod -a -G www-pub userb

groups usera ## display groups for user
Change the ownership of everything under /var/www to root:www-pub

chown -R root:www-pub /var/www ## -R for recursive
Change the permissions of all the folders to 2775

chmod 2775 /var/www ## 2=set group id, 7=rwx for owner (root), 7=rwx for group (www-pub), 5=rx for world (including apache www-data user)

Set group ID (SETGID) bit (2) causes the group (www-pub) to be copied to all new files/folders created in that folder. Other options are SETUID (4) to copy the user id, and STICKY (1) which I think lets only the owner delete files.

There's a -R recursive option, but that won't discriminate between files and folders, so you have to use find, like so:

find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} +
Change all the files to 0664

find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 0664 {} +
Change the umask for your users to 0002

The umask controls the default file creation permissions, 0002 means files will have 664 and directories 775. Setting this (by editing the umask line at the bottom of /etc/profile in my case) means files created by one user will be writable by other users in the www-group without needing to chmod them.

Test all this by creating a file and directory and verifying the owner, group and permissions with ls -l.

Note: You'll need to logout/in for changes to your groups to take effect!

Linux – Using Find to Locate Files Older Than a Specific Date

If you have only '-newer file' then you can use this workaround:

# create 'some_file' having a creation date of 16 Mar 2010:
touch -t 201003160120 some_file

# find all files created after this date
find . -newer some_file

man touch:

  -t STAMP
          use [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] instead of current time

Assuming that your touch has this option (mine is touch 5.97).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux File Permissions – Best Way to Handle Apache 2’s www-data User in /var/www

Linux – Using Find to Locate Files Older Than a Specific Date

Related Topic