How to use regex in file find

Question

I was trying to find all files dated and all files 3 days or more ago.

find /home/test -name 'test.log.\d{4}-d{2}-d{2}.zip' -mtime 3 

It is not listing anything. What is wrong with it?

Answer 1

find /home/test -regextype posix-extended -regex '^.*test\.log\.[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}\.zip' -mtime +3 

1. -name uses globular expressions, aka wildcards. What you want is -regex
2. To use intervals as you intend, you need to tell find to use Extended Regular Expressions via the -regextype posix-extended flag
3. You need to escape out the periods because in regex a period has the special meaning of any single character. What you want is a literal period denoted by \.
4. To match only those files that are greater than 3 days old, you need to prefix your number with a + as in -mtime +3.

Proof of Concept

$ find . -regextype posix-extended -regex '^.*test\.log\.[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}\.zip' ./test.log.1234-12-12.zip 

Answer 2

Use -regex not -name, and be aware that the regex matches against what find would print, e.g. "/home/test/test.log" not "test.log"