Finding all executable files on the system

find is one of the most useful and feature rich commands in Linux. Sometimes it is not that obvious which parameters should be fed to find for this or that behaviour. The manual could surely use some work.

Today I was trying to figure out how I can find all executable files on the system. The manual suggests that I use the -perm option with the specification of the mode. Figuring out the mode might get to you, so here is the example:

find / -type f -perm +0111

One could specify any mode what-so-ever. Just remember that 1 stands for ‘execute’, 2 stands for ‘write’, and 4 stands for ‘read’.

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