Search for executable files using find command

Question

What type of parameter/flag can I use with the Unix find command so that I search executables?

Answer 1

find . -executable -type f

does not really guarantee that the file is executable it will find files with the execution bit set. If you do

chmod a+x image.jpg

the above find will think image.jpg is an executable even if it is really a jpeg image with the execution bit set.

I generally work around the issue with this:

find . -type f -executable -exec file {} \; | grep -wE "executable|shared object|ELF|script|a\.out|ASCII text"

If you want the find to actually print dome information about executable files you can do something like this:

find . -type f -executable -printf "%i.%D %s %m %U %G %C@ %p" 2>/dev/null |while read LINE
do
  NAME=$(awk '{print $NF}' <<< $LINE)
  file -b $NAME |grep -qEw "executable|shared object|ELF|script|a\.out|ASCII text" && echo $LINE
done

In the above example the file's full pathname is in the last field and must reflect where you look for it with awk "NAME=$(awk '{print $NF}' <<< $LINE)" if the file name was elsewhere in the find output string you need to replace "NF" with the correct numerical position. If your separator is not space you also need to tell awk what your separator is.