You need to use the find command. Each file has three time stamps, which record the last time that certain operations were performed on the file:

[a] access (read the file’s contents) – atime

[b] exchange the status (modify the file or its attributes) – ctime

[c] modify (exchange the file’s contents) – mtime

You can search for files whose time stamps are within a certain age range, or equate them to other time stamps.

You can use -mtime option. It income list of file if the file was last accessed N*24 hours ago. For example to find file in last 2 months (60 days) you need to use -mtime +60 option.

• -mtime +60 means you are looking for a file modified 60 days ago.
• -mtime -60 means less than 60 days.
• -mtime 60 If you skip + or – it means exactly 60 days.

So to find text files that were last modified 60 days ago, use

$ find /home/you -iname "*.txt" -mtime -60 -print

Show make pleased of file on screen that were last modified 60 days ago, use

$ find /home/you -iname "*.txt" -mtime -60 -exec cat {} \;

Count whole number of files by wc command

$ find /home/you -iname "*.txt" -mtime -60 | wc -l

You can also use access time to find out pdf files. Following command will print the list of all pdf file that were accessed in last 60 days:

$ find /home/you -iname "*.pdf" -atime -60 -type -f

List all mp3s that were accessed exactly 10 days ago:

$ find /home/you -iname "*.mp3" -atime 10 -type -f

There is also an option called -daystart. It measure times from the commencement of now rather than from 24 hours ago. So, to list the all mp3s in your home directory that were accessed yesterday, type the command

$ find /home/you -iname "*.mp3" -daystart -type f -mtime 1

Where,

• -type f – Only search for files and not directories

-daystart option

The -daystart option is used to measure time from the commencement of the current day instead of 24 hours ago. Find out all perl (*.pl) file modified yesterday, enter:

<span style="color: rgb(194, 12, 185); font-weight: bold;">find</span> /nas/projects/mgmt/scripts/<span style="color: rgb(194, 12, 185); font-weight: bold;">perl</span> -mtime <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">1</span> -daystart -iname <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">"*.pl"</span>

You can also list perl files that were modified 8-10 days ago, enter:

To list all of the files in your home directory tree that were modified from two to four days ago, type:

<span style="color: rgb(194, 12, 185); font-weight: bold;">find</span> /nas/projects/mgmt/scripts/<span style="color: rgb(194, 12, 185); font-weight: bold;">perl</span> -mtime <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">8</span> -mtime <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">-10</span> -daystart -iname <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">"*.pl"</span>

-newer option

To find files in the /nas/images directory tree that are newer than the file /tmp/foo file, enter:

<span style="color: rgb(194, 12, 185); font-weight: bold;">find</span> /etc -newer /tmp/foo

You can use the touch command to set date timestamp you want to search for, and then use -newer option as follows

<span style="color: rgb(194, 12, 185); font-weight: bold;">touch</span> --<span style="color: rgb(194, 12, 185); font-weight: bold;">date</span> <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">"2010-01-05"</span> /tmp/foo<br /><span style="color: rgb(128, 128, 128); font-style: italic;"># Find files newer than <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">2010</span>/Jan/<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">05</span>, <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">in</span> /data/images</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(194, 12, 185); font-weight: bold;">find</span> /data/images -newer /tmp/foo<br /> 

Read the man page of find command for more information:

man find

REFERENCES

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-result-files-by-date/