I need to do find files by using the creation time of another file. For example if i create a file at 21:00 with a particular date and later i wanted to find all the files created within 30 minutes after it or.
As i'm a newbie i'm pretty much confused with find. Any help would be appreciated!
You could use find with the option --newerXY
This allows you to use a file or date as reference for time period start or end.
For example
find . -newermt "2014-11-09 12:00:00" ! -newermt "2014-11-09 12:30:00"
Will find all files modified between 12:00:00 and 12:30:00
Of course you can also provide a file as reference for start or end
find . -newer somefile ! -newermt "2014-11-09 12:30:00"
Here is the part of the manpage that covers newerXY
-newerXY reference
Compares the timestamp of the current file with reference. The reference argument is normally the name of a file (and one of its timestamps is used for the comparison) but it
may also be a string describing an absolute time. X and Y are placeholders for other letters, and these letters select which time belonging to how reference is used for the
comparison.
a The access time of the file reference
B The birth time of the file reference
c The inode status change time of reference
m The modification time of the file reference
t reference is interpreted directly as a time
Some combinations are invalid; for example, it is invalid for X to be t. Some combinations are not implemented on all systems; for example B is not supported on all systems.
If an invalid or unsupported combination of XY is specified, a fatal error results. Time specifications are interpreted as for the argument to the -d option of GNU date. If
you try to use the birth time of a reference file, and the birth time cannot be determined, a fatal error message results. If you specify a test which refers to the birth time
of files being examined, this test will fail for any files where the birth time is unknown.