Linux / Unix: Find And List All Hidden Files Recursively
I
am a new Unix system shell user. I need to find and list all hidden files including directories on a Linux or Unix-like system. How can I recursively list all hidden files and directories? How do I save result in a text file?
You need to use the find command to list all hidden files recursively on a Linux or Unix like systems.
Syntax: Recursively list all hidden files and directories on Linux/Unix
The basic syntax is as follows:
find /dir/to/search/ -name .* -print
OR
find /dir/to/search/ -name .* -ls
OR search only hidden files:
find /dir/to/search/ -type f -iname .* -ls
OR search only hidden directories:
find /dir/to/search/ -type d -iname .* -ls
OR
find /dir/to/search -path */.* -print
find /dir/to/search -path */.* -ls
In this example, search $HOME for all hidden files and dirs:
find $HOME -name .* -ls
Sample outputs:
6553607 4 -rw-r–r– 1 admi admi 100 Sep 22 2004 ./.cshrc
6553664 4 -rw——- 1 admi admi 1024 Nov 17 04:40 ./.rnd
6553604 4 -rw-r–r– 1 admi admi 18 May 20 2009 ./.bash_logout
6553665 4 drwx—— 2 admi admi 4096 Dec 18 2012 ./.gnupg
6553671 0 -rw——- 1 admi admi 0 Dec 18 2012 ./.gnupg/secring.gpg
6553669 0 -rw——- 1 admi admi 0 Dec 18 2012 ./.gnupg/pubring.gpg~
6553673 4 -rw——- 1 admi admi 899 Dec 18 2012 ./.gnupg/pubring.gpg
6553667 8 -rw——- 1 admi admi 7856 Dec 18 2012 ./.gnupg/gpg.conf
6553668 4 -rw——- 1 admi admi 1200 Dec 18 2012 ./.gnupg/trustdb.gpg
6553602 20 -rw——- 1 admi admi 17462 Apr 7 10:55 ./.bash_history
6553610 4 drwx—— 3 admi admi 4096 Jan 16 2013 ./.config
6553660 4 drwx—— 2 admi admi 4096 Jan 16 2013 ./.config/htop
6553681 4 -rw-r–r– 1 admi admi 597 Apr 11 2013 ./.config/htop/htoprc
6553723 12 -rw——- 1 admi admi 9629 Mar 30 23:56 ./.viminfo
6553615 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 admi admi 4096 Nov 29 2012 ./.original-configs
To save the results to a file called foo.txt, use a redirection as follows:
find $HOME/projects/ -name .* -ls > foo.txt
cat foo.txt
See find(1) for more information.
