Provided by:
findutils_4.4.0-2ubuntu3_i386 
NAME
find - search for files in a directory hierarchy
SYNOPSIS
find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-D debugopts] [-Olevel] [path...] [expression]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the GNU version of find. GNU find searches
the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the
given expression from left to right, according to the rules of
precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the
left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which
point find moves on to the next file name.
If you are using find in an environment where security is important
(for example if you are using it to search directories that are
writable by other users), you should read the "Security Considerations"
chapter of the findutils documentation, which is called Finding Files
and comes with findutils. That document also includes a lot more
detail and discussion than this manual page, so you may find it a more
useful source of information.
OPTIONS
The -H, -L and -P options control the treatment of symbolic links.
Command-line arguments following these are taken to be names of files
or directories to be examined, up to the first argument that begins
with ‘-’, or the argument ‘(’ or ‘!’. That argument and any following
arguments are taken to be the expression describing what is to be
searched for. If no paths are given, the current directory is used.
If no expression is given, the expression -print is used (but you
should probably consider using -print0 instead, anyway).
This manual page talks about ‘options’ within the expression list.
These options control the behaviour of find but are specified
immediately after the last path name. The five ‘real’ options -H, -L,
-P, -D and -O must appear before the first path name, if at all. A
double dash -- can also be used to signal that any remaining arguments
are not options (though ensuring that all start points begin with
either ‘./’ or ‘/’ is generally safer if you use wildcards in the list
of start points).
-P Never follow symbolic links. This is the default behaviour.
When find examines or prints information a file, and the file is
a symbolic link, the information used shall be taken from the
properties of the symbolic link itself.
-L Follow symbolic links. When find examines or prints information
about files, the information used shall be taken from the
properties of the file to which the link points, not from the
link itself (unless it is a broken symbolic link or find is
unable to examine the file to which the link points). Use of
this option implies -noleaf. If you later use the -P option,
-noleaf will still be in effect. If -L is in effect and find
discovers a symbolic link to a subdirectory during its search,
the subdirectory pointed to by the symbolic link will be
searched.
When the -L option is in effect, the -type predicate will always
match against the type of the file that a symbolic link points
to rather than the link itself (unless the symbolic link is
broken). Using -L causes the -lname and -ilname predicates
always to return false.
-H Do not follow symbolic links, except while processing the
command line arguments. When find examines or prints
information about files, the information used shall be taken
from the properties of the symbolic link itself. The only
exception to this behaviour is when a file specified on the
command line is a symbolic link, and the link can be resolved.
For that situation, the information used is taken from whatever
the link points to (that is, the link is followed). The
information about the link itself is used as a fallback if the
file pointed to by the symbolic link cannot be examined. If -H
is in effect and one of the paths specified on the command line
is a symbolic link to a directory, the contents of that
directory will be examined (though of course -maxdepth 0 would
prevent this).
If more than one of -H, -L and -P is specified, each overrides the
others; the last one appearing on the command line takes effect. Since
it is the default, the -P option should be considered to be in effect
unless either -H or -L is specified.
GNU find frequently stats files during the processing of the command
line itself, before any searching has begun. These options also affect
how those arguments are processed. Specifically, there are a number of
tests that compare files listed on the command line against a file we
are currently considering. In each case, the file specified on the
command line will have been examined and some of its properties will
have been saved. If the named file is in fact a symbolic link, and the
-P option is in effect (or if neither -H nor -L were specified), the
information used for the comparison will be taken from the properties
of the symbolic link. Otherwise, it will be taken from the properties
of the file the link points to. If find cannot follow the link (for
example because it has insufficient privileges or the link points to a
nonexistent file) the properties of the link itself will be used.
When the -H or -L options are in effect, any symbolic links listed as
the argument of -newer will be dereferenced, and the timestamp will be
taken from the file to which the symbolic link points. The same
consideration applies to -newerXY, -anewer and -cnewer.
The -follow option has a similar effect to -L, though it takes effect
at the point where it appears (that is, if -L is not used but -follow
is, any symbolic links appearing after -follow on the command line will
be dereferenced, and those before it will not).
-D debugoptions
Print diagnostic information; this can be helpful to diagnose
problems with why find is not doing what you want. The list of
debug options should be comma separated. Compatibility of the
debug options is not guaranteed between releases of findutils.
For a complete list of valid debug options, see the output of
find -D help. Valid debug options include
help Explain the debugging options
tree Show the expression tree in its original and optimised
form.
stat Print messages as files are examined with the stat and
lstat system calls. The find program tries to minimise
such calls.
opt Prints diagnostic information relating to the
optimisation of the expression tree; see the -O option.
rates Prints a summary indicating how often each predicate
succeeded or failed.
-Olevel
Enables query optimisation. The find program reorders tests to
speed up execution while preserving the overall effect; that is,
predicates with side effects are not reordered relative to each
other. The optimisations performed at each optimisation level
are as follows.
0 Equivalent to optimisation level 1.
1 This is the default optimisation level and corresponds to
the traditional behaviour. Expressions are reordered so
that tests based only on the names of files (for example
-name and -regex) are performed first.
2 Any -type or -xtype tests are performed after any tests
based only on the names of files, but before any tests
that require information from the inode. On many modern
versions of Unix, file types are returned by readdir()
and so these predicates are faster to evaluate than
predicates which need to stat the file first.
3 At this optimisation level, the full cost-based query
optimiser is enabled. The order of tests is modified so
that cheap (i.e. fast) tests are performed first and more
expensive ones are performed later, if necessary. Within
each cost band, predicates are evaluated earlier or later
according to whether they are likely to succeed or not.
For -o, predicates which are likely to succeed are
evaluated earlier, and for -a, predicates which are
likely to fail are evaluated earlier.
The cost-based optimiser has a fixed idea of how likely any
given test is to succeed. In some cases the probability takes
account of the specific nature of the test (for example, -type f
is assumed to be more likely to succeed than -type c). The
cost-based optimiser is currently being evaluated. If it does
not actually improve the performance of find, it will be removed
again. Conversely, optimisations that prove to be reliable,
robust and effective may be enabled at lower optimisation levels
over time. However, the default behaviour (i.e. optimisation
level 1) will not be changed in the 4.3.x release series. The
findutils test suite runs all the tests on find at each
optimisation level and ensures that the result is the same.
EXPRESSIONS
The expression is made up of options (which affect overall operation
rather than the processing of a specific file, and always return true),
tests (which return a true or false value), and actions (which have
side effects and return a true or false value), all separated by
operators. -and is assumed where the operator is omitted.
If the expression contains no actions other than -prune, -print is
performed on all files for which the expression is true.
OPTIONS
All options always return true. Except for -daystart, -follow and
-regextype, the options affect all tests, including tests specified
before the option. This is because the options are processed when the
command line is parsed, while the tests don’t do anything until files
are examined. The -daystart, -follow and -regextype options are
different in this respect, and have an effect only on tests which
appear later in the command line. Therefore, for clarity, it is best
to place them at the beginning of the expression. A warning is issued
if you don’t do this.
-d A synonym for -depth, for compatibility with FreeBSD, NetBSD,
MacOS X and OpenBSD.
-daystart
Measure times (for -amin, -atime, -cmin, -ctime, -mmin, and
-mtime) from the beginning of today rather than from 24 hours
ago. This option only affects tests which appear later on the
command line.
-depth Process each directory’s contents before the directory itself.
The -delete action also implies -depth.
-follow
Deprecated; use the -L option instead. Dereference symbolic
links. Implies -noleaf. The -follow option affects only those
tests which appear after it on the command line. Unless the -H
or -L option has been specified, the position of the -follow
option changes the behaviour of the -newer predicate; any files
listed as the argument of -newer will be dereferenced if they
are symbolic links. The same consideration applies to -newerXY,
-anewer and -cnewer. Similarly, the -type predicate will always
match against the type of the file that a symbolic link points
to rather than the link itself. Using -follow causes the -lname
and -ilname predicates always to return false.
-help, --help
Print a summary of the command-line usage of find and exit.
-ignore_readdir_race
Normally, find will emit an error message when it fails to stat
a file. If you give this option and a file is deleted between
the time find reads the name of the file from the directory and
the time it tries to stat the file, no error message will be
issued. This also applies to files or directories whose names
are given on the command line. This option takes effect at the
time the command line is read, which means that you cannot
search one part of the filesystem with this option on and part
of it with this option off (if you need to do that, you will
need to issue two find commands instead, one with the option and
one without it).
-maxdepth levels
Descend at most levels (a non-negative integer) levels of
directories below the command line arguments. -maxdepth 0
means only apply the tests and actions to the command line
arguments.
-mindepth levels
Do not apply any tests or actions at levels less than levels (a
non-negative integer). -mindepth 1 means process all files
except the command line arguments.
-mount Don’t descend directories on other filesystems. An alternate
name for -xdev, for compatibility with some other versions of
find.
-noignore_readdir_race
Turns off the effect of -ignore_readdir_race.
-noleaf
Do not optimize by assuming that directories contain 2 fewer
subdirectories than their hard link count. This option is
needed when searching filesystems that do not follow the Unix
directory-link convention, such as CD-ROM or MS-DOS filesystems
or AFS volume mount points. Each directory on a normal Unix
filesystem has at least 2 hard links: its name and its ‘.’
entry. Additionally, its subdirectories (if any) each have a
‘..’ entry linked to that directory. When find is examining a
directory, after it has statted 2 fewer subdirectories than the
directory’s link count, it knows that the rest of the entries in
the directory are non-directories (‘leaf’ files in the directory
tree). If only the files’ names need to be examined, there is
no need to stat them; this gives a significant increase in
search speed.
-regextype type
Changes the regular expression syntax understood by -regex and
-iregex tests which occur later on the command line. Currently-
implemented types are emacs (this is the default), posix-awk,
posix-basic, posix-egrep and posix-extended.
-version, --version
Print the find version number and exit.
-warn, -nowarn
Turn warning messages on or off. These warnings apply only to
the command line usage, not to any conditions that find might
encounter when it searches directories. The default behaviour
corresponds to -warn if standard input is a tty, and to -nowarn
otherwise.
-xdev Don’t descend directories on other filesystems.
TESTS
Some tests, for example -newerXY and -samefile, allow comparison
between the file currently being examined and some reference file
specified on the command line. When these tests are used, the
interpretation of the reference file is determined by the options -H,
-L and -P and any previous -follow, but the reference file is only
examined once, at the time the command line is parsed. If the
reference file cannot be examined (for example, the stat(2) system call
fails for it), an error message is issued, and find exits with a
nonzero status.
Numeric arguments can be specified as
+n for greater than n,
-n for less than n,
n for exactly n.
-amin n
File was last accessed n minutes ago.
-anewer file
File was last accessed more recently than file was modified. If
file is a symbolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in
effect, the access time of the file it points to is always used.
-atime n
File was last accessed n*24 hours ago. When find figures out
how many 24-hour periods ago the file was last accessed, any
fractional part is ignored, so to match -atime +1, a file has to
have been accessed at least two days ago.
-cmin n
File’s status was last changed n minutes ago.
-cnewer file
File’s status was last changed more recently than file was
modified. If file is a symbolic link and the -H option or the
-L option is in effect, the status-change time of the file it
points to is always used.
-ctime n
File’s status was last changed n*24 hours ago. See the comments
for -atime to understand how rounding affects the interpretation
of file status change times.
-empty File is empty and is either a regular file or a directory.
-executable
Matches files which are executable and directories which are
searchable (in a file name resolution sense). This takes into
account access control lists and other permissions artefacts
which the -perm test ignores. This test makes use of the
access(2) system call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which
do UID mapping (or root-squashing), since many systems implement
access(2) in the client’s kernel and so cannot make use of the
UID mapping information held on the server. Because this test
is based only on the result of the access(2) system call, there
is no guarantee that a file for which this test succeeds can
actually be executed.
-false Always false.
-fstype type
File is on a filesystem of type type. The valid filesystem
types vary among different versions of Unix; an incomplete list
of filesystem types that are accepted on some version of Unix or
another is: ufs, 4.2, 4.3, nfs, tmp, mfs, S51K, S52K. You can
use -printf with the %F directive to see the types of your
filesystems.
-gid n File’s numeric group ID is n.
-group gname
File belongs to group gname (numeric group ID allowed).
-ilname pattern
Like -lname, but the match is case insensitive. If the -L
option or the -follow option is in effect, this test returns
false unless the symbolic link is broken.
-iname pattern
Like -name, but the match is case insensitive. For example, the
patterns ‘fo*’ and ‘F??’ match the file names ‘Foo’, ‘FOO’,
‘foo’, ‘fOo’, etc. In these patterns, unlike filename
expansion by the shell, an initial ’.’ can be matched by ‘*’.
That is, find -name *bar will match the file ‘.foobar’. Please
note that you should quote patterns as a matter of course,
otherwise the shell will expand any wildcard characters in them.
-inum n
File has inode number n. It is normally easier to use the
-samefile test instead.
-ipath pattern
Behaves in the same way as -iwholename. This option is
deprecated, so please do not use it.
-iregex pattern
Like -regex, but the match is case insensitive.
-iwholename pattern
Like -wholename, but the match is case insensitive.
-links n
File has n links.
-lname pattern
File is a symbolic link whose contents match shell pattern
pattern. The metacharacters do not treat ‘/’ or ‘.’ specially.
If the -L option or the -follow option is in effect, this test
returns false unless the symbolic link is broken.
-mmin n
File’s data was last modified n minutes ago.
-mtime n
File’s data was last modified n*24 hours ago. See the comments
for -atime to understand how rounding affects the interpretation
of file modification times.
-name pattern
Base of file name (the path with the leading directories
removed) matches shell pattern pattern. The metacharacters
(‘*’, ‘?’, and ‘[]’) match a ‘.’ at the start of the base name
(this is a change in findutils-4.2.2; see section STANDARDS
CONFORMANCE below). To ignore a directory and the files under
it, use -prune; see an example in the description of -path.
Braces are not recognised as being special, despite the fact
that some shells including Bash imbue braces with a special
meaning in shell patterns. The filename matching is performed
with the use of the fnmatch(3) library function. Don’t forget
to enclose the pattern in quotes in order to protect it from
expansion by the shell.
-newer file
File was modified more recently than file. If file is a
symbolic link and the -H option or the -L option is in effect,
the modification time of the file it points to is always used.
-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.
-nogroup
No group corresponds to file’s numeric group ID.
-nouser
No user corresponds to file’s numeric user ID.
-path pattern
File name matches shell pattern pattern. The metacharacters do
not treat ‘/’ or ‘.’ specially; so, for example,
find . -path "./sr*sc"
will print an entry for a directory called ‘./src/misc’ (if one
exists). To ignore a whole directory tree, use -prune rather
than checking every file in the tree. For example, to skip the
directory ‘src/emacs’ and all files and directories under it,
and print the names of the other files found, do something like
this:
find . -path ./src/emacs -prune -o -print
Note that the pattern match test applies to the whole file name,
starting from one of the start points named on the command line.
It would only make sense to use an absolute path name here if
the relevant start point is also an absolute path. This means
that this command will never match anything:
find bar -path /foo/bar/myfile -print
The predicate -path is also supported by HP-UX find and will be
in a forthcoming version of the POSIX standard.
-perm mode
File’s permission bits are exactly mode (octal or symbolic).
Since an exact match is required, if you want to use this form
for symbolic modes, you may have to specify a rather complex
mode string. For example -perm g=w will only match files which
have mode 0020 (that is, ones for which group write permission
is the only permission set). It is more likely that you will
want to use the ‘/’ or ‘-’ forms, for example -perm -g=w, which
matches any file with group write permission. See the EXAMPLES
section for some illustrative examples.
-perm -mode
All of the permission bits mode are set for the file. Symbolic
modes are accepted in this form, and this is usually the way in
which would want to use them. You must specify ‘u’, ‘g’ or ‘o’
if you use a symbolic mode. See the EXAMPLES section for some
illustrative examples.
-perm /mode
Any of the permission bits mode are set for the file. Symbolic
modes are accepted in this form. You must specify ‘u’, ‘g’ or
‘o’ if you use a symbolic mode. See the EXAMPLES section for
some illustrative examples. If no permission bits in mode are
set, this test currently matches no files. However, it will
soon be changed to match any file (the idea is to be more
consistent with the behaviour of -perm -000).
-perm +mode
Deprecated, old way of searching for files with any of the
permission bits in mode set. You should use -perm /mode
instead. Trying to use the ‘+’ syntax with symbolic modes will
yield surprising results. For example, ‘+u+x’ is a valid
symbolic mode (equivalent to +u,+x, i.e. 0111) and will
therefore not be evaluated as -perm +mode but instead as the
exact mode specifier -perm mode and so it matches files with
exact permissions 0111 instead of files with any execute bit
set. If you found this paragraph confusing, you’re not alone -
just use -perm /mode. This form of the -perm test is deprecated
because the POSIX specification requires the interpretation of a
leading ‘+’ as being part of a symbolic mode, and so we switched
to using ‘/’ instead.
-readable
Matches files which are readable. This takes into account
access control lists and other permissions artefacts which the
-perm test ignores. This test makes use of the access(2) system
call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do UID mapping
(or root-squashing), since many systems implement access(2) in
the client’s kernel and so cannot make use of the UID mapping
information held on the server.
-regex pattern
File name matches regular expression pattern. This is a match
on the whole path, not a search. For example, to match a file
named ‘./fubar3’, you can use the regular expression ‘.*bar.’ or
‘.*b.*3’, but not ‘f.*r3’. The regular expressions understood
by find are by default Emacs Regular Expressions, but this can
be changed with the -regextype option.
-samefile name
File refers to the same inode as name. When -L is in effect,
this can include symbolic links.
-size n[cwbkMG]
File uses n units of space. The following suffixes can be used:
‘b’ for 512-byte blocks (this is the default if no suffix is
used)
‘c’ for bytes
‘w’ for two-byte words
‘k’ for Kilobytes (units of 1024 bytes)
‘M’ for Megabytes (units of 1048576 bytes)
‘G’ for Gigabytes (units of 1073741824 bytes)
The size does not count indirect blocks, but it does count
blocks in sparse files that are not actually allocated. Bear in
mind that the ‘%k’ and ‘%b’ format specifiers of -printf handle
sparse files differently. The ‘b’ suffix always denotes
512-byte blocks and never 1 Kilobyte blocks, which is different
to the behaviour of -ls.
-true Always true.
-type c
File is of type c:
b block (buffered) special
c character (unbuffered) special
d directory
p named pipe (FIFO)
f regular file
l symbolic link; this is never true if the -L option or the
-follow option is in effect, unless the symbolic link is
broken. If you want to search for symbolic links when -L
is in effect, use -xtype.
s socket
D door (Solaris)
-uid n File’s numeric user ID is n.
-used n
File was last accessed n days after its status was last changed.
-user uname
File is owned by user uname (numeric user ID allowed).
-wholename pattern
See -path. This alternative is less portable than -path.
-writable
Matches files which are writable. This takes into account
access control lists and other permissions artefacts which the
-perm test ignores. This test makes use of the access(2) system
call, and so can be fooled by NFS servers which do UID mapping
(or root-squashing), since many systems implement access(2) in
the client’s kernel and so cannot make use of the UID mapping
information held on the server.
-xtype c
The same as -type unless the file is a symbolic link. For
symbolic links: if the -H or -P option was specified, true if
the file is a link to a file of type c; if the -L option has
been given, true if c is ‘l’. In other words, for symbolic
links, -xtype checks the type of the file that -type does not
check.
ACTIONS
-delete
Delete files; true if removal succeeded. If the removal failed,
an error message is issued. If -delete fails, find’s exit
status will be nonzero (when it eventually exits). Use of
-delete automatically turns on the -depth option.
Warnings: Don’t forget that the find command line is evaluated
as an expression, so putting -delete first will make find try to
delete everything below the starting points you specified. When
testing a find command line that you later intend to use with
-delete, you should explicitly specify -depth in order to avoid
later surprises. Because -delete implies -depth, you cannot
usefully use -prune and -delete together.
-exec command ;
Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All following
arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until
an argument consisting of ‘;’ is encountered. The string ‘{}’
is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere
it occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in arguments
where it is alone, as in some versions of find. Both of these
constructions might need to be escaped (with a ‘\’) or quoted to
protect them from expansion by the shell. See the EXAMPLES
section for examples of the use of the -exec option. The
specified command is run once for each matched file. The
command is executed in the starting directory. There are
unavoidable security problems surrounding use of the -exec
action; you should use the -execdir option instead.
-exec command {} +
This variant of the -exec action runs the specified command on
the selected files, but the command line is built by appending
each selected file name at the end; the total number of
invocations of the command will be much less than the number of
matched files. The command line is built in much the same way
that xargs builds its command lines. Only one instance of ‘{}’
is allowed within the command. The command is executed in the
starting directory.
-execdir command ;
-execdir command {} +
Like -exec, but the specified command is run from the
subdirectory containing the matched file, which is not normally
the directory in which you started find. This a much more
secure method for invoking commands, as it avoids race
conditions during resolution of the paths to the matched files.
As with the -exec action, the ‘+’ form of -execdir will build a
command line to process more than one matched file, but any
given invocation of command will only list files that exist in
the same subdirectory. If you use this option, you must ensure
that your $PATH environment variable does not reference ‘.’;
otherwise, an attacker can run any commands they like by leaving
an appropriately-named file in a directory in which you will run
-execdir. The same applies to having entries in $PATH which are
empty or which are not absolute directory names.
-fls file
True; like -ls but write to file like -fprint. The output file
is always created, even if the predicate is never matched. See
the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual
characters in filenames are handled.
-fprint file
True; print the full file name into file file. If file does not
exist when find is run, it is created; if it does exist, it is
truncated. The file names ‘‘/dev/stdout’’ and ‘‘/dev/stderr’’
are handled specially; they refer to the standard output and
standard error output, respectively. The output file is always
created, even if the predicate is never matched. See the
UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how unusual
characters in filenames are handled.
-fprint0 file
True; like -print0 but write to file like -fprint. The output
file is always created, even if the predicate is never matched.
See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how
unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-fprintf file format
True; like -printf but write to file like -fprint. The output
file is always created, even if the predicate is never matched.
See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information about how
unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-ls True; list current file in ls -dils format on standard output.
The block counts are of 1K blocks, unless the environment
variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, in which case 512-byte blocks
are used. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information
about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-ok command ;
Like -exec but ask the user first (on the standard input); if
the response does not start with ‘y’ or ‘Y’, do not run the
command, and return false. If the command is run, its standard
input is redirected from /dev/null.
-okdir command ;
Like -execdir but ask the user first (on the standard input); if
the response does not start with ‘y’ or ‘Y’, do not run the
command, and return false. If the command is run, its standard
input is redirected from /dev/null.
-print True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed
by a newline. If you are piping the output of find into
another program and there is the faintest possibility that the
files which you are searching for might contain a newline, then
you should seriously consider using the -print0 option instead
of -print. See the UNUSUAL FILENAMES section for information
about how unusual characters in filenames are handled.
-print0
True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed
by a null character (instead of the newline character that
-print uses). This allows file names that contain newlines or
other types of white space to be correctly interpreted by
programs that process the find output. This option corresponds
to the -0 option of xargs.
-printf format
True; print format on the standard output, interpreting ‘\’
escapes and ‘%’ directives. Field widths and precisions can be
specified as with the ‘printf’ C function. Please note that
many of the fields are printed as %s rather than %d, and this
may mean that flags don’t work as you might expect. This also
means that the ‘-’ flag does work (it forces fields to be left-
aligned). Unlike -print, -printf does not add a newline at the
end of the string. The escapes and directives are:
Alarm bell.
Backspace.