Originally posted by: s_m_gopinath

Greetings champs,

I am new to AIX and I need some help regarding the "Find" command. I understood that atime is access time, ctime is create time and mtime is modified time. But I don't understand what the below text describes in the atime and mtime :

-mtime n The value of n can be one of the following:
n - Evaluates as True if the file modification time subtracted from the initialization time, divided by 86400 seconds (with any remainder discarded), is n. 86400 seconds is 24 hours.
-n - Evaluates as True if the file modification time subtracted from the initialization time, divided by 86400 seconds (with any remainder discarded), is less than n.
+n - Evaluates as True if the file modification time subtracted from the initialization time, divided by 86400 seconds (with any remainder discarded), is greater than n (in case of UNIX03, greater than n+1).

Can some one explain what it is in simple terms.

With regards,
Gopinath.
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Originally posted by: orphy

Think of "n" is the same as the "number of days" although, technically, it is doing things in seconds. Pay attention to the value of "n" of the -mtime parameter in the two examples below and compare the timestamps of the files found.

In short, a "-n" will give you anything that is modified (-mtime) or accessed (-atime) within the "n" days. A "+n" will give you the files OLDER than "n" days.

1. date

Thu Aug 9 10:31:24 EDT 2012

1. find /tmp -name \*.out -mtime -7 -ls|head -2

127 3 -rw-r--r-- 1 root system 2600 Aug 8 23:59 /tmp/archive.out
237 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root system 0 Aug 9 00:00 /tmp/collect.out

1. find /tmp -name \*.out -mtime +7 -ls|head -2

28677 1 -rw-r----- 1 root system 667 Nov 17 2008 /tmp/myfile.db.out
28686 1 -rw-r----- 1 root system 568 Nov 17 2008 /tmp/myfile.proc.out
Orphy
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