goal: find files 1 from 2010 - ie older than 400 2 with "scallix" in the file name 3 with 1738 in the file contents 1. i used http://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html?m1=06&d1=01&y1=2010&m2=2&d2=15&y2=2012 to calculate the mtime 2. i used http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/general-10/file-creation-date-in-linux-473684/ to tell me about mtime 3. i used http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/106032/how-to-grep-tricks-linux-users to look at combining grep with find 4. result: find . -mtime +400 -name "*scallix*" -exec grep 1738 '{}' \; -print