Commands I use on a regular basis: find and exec

In this example, we are using find to search for all files 24 hours old, outputting the contents, filtering the results through a Python program, and redirecting the final output to a text file.

find . -type f -mtime -1 -exec cat {} \; | ~/findAllDynamicMacAddresses.py >  ~/dynamic-mac-address.txt

The find command is a multipurpose tool for locating files and directories.

-type f - Only look for files (not directories)

-mtime 1 - Only return files that are 24 hours old or less.

-exec cat {} \; - Take the files returned from the find criteria and cat (display) the contents. The string {} is replaced by the current file name being processed.

| - Send the output from the left side of the pipe to the command on the right side. In this example, the contents of the files returned from find and displayed by cat are processed through a Python script designed to locate all MAC addresses in a file.

> - Write all the output to a file

~ - Variable that expands out to the currently logged in users home directory. In this example: /home/jemurray/.