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