Re: Possible bug with -size and a one

On 2025-06-07 Scott Baker <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm trying to find all the files in /tmp/ that less than 1MB.

> mkdir /tmp/scott
> cd /tmp/scott
> echo "Hello world" > test.txt
> find . -size -1M -type f    # doesn't work
> find . -size -2M -type f    # works
> find . -size -1024k -type f # works

> From what I can tell doing -size -1[kMG] doesn't output any files? It's
> pretty easy to use a non-one number with size but it's a footgun that it
> doesn't work like the user would expect.

Quoting find(1):
    The  +  and  -  prefixes  signify  greater than and less than, as
     usual; i.e., an exact size of n units does not  match.   Bear  in
     mind  that  the  size  is rounded up to the next unit.  Therefore
     -size -1M is not equivalent to -size -1048576c.  The former  only
     matches empty files, the latter matches files from 0 to 1,048,575
     bytes.

cu Andreas
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