find -mtime [+-n]" is broken (behaves as "-mtime n") find -mtime allows to find file according to their age. However, this version interprets -mtime -n and +n in the same way. But it should interpret find -mtime -n as finding files that are *strictly less* than n days old and find -mtime +n as finding files that are *strictly more* than n days old. Lets say we created one file each day in the last 3 days in directory tmp: $ mkdir tmp $ touch tmp/a -t $(date --date="today" +"%y%m%d%H%M") $ touch tmp/b -t $(date --date="yesterday" +"%y%m%d%H%M") $ touch tmp/c -t $(date --date="2 days ago" +"%y%m%d%H%M") $ touch tmp/d -t $(date --date="3 days ago" +"%y%m%d%H%M") If we run the following, we would expect this output $ ./find tmp -mtime -2 tmp tmp/a tmp/b However, I actually get this output $ ./find tmp -mtime -2 tmp/c Results are the same if I replace -n with +n, or just n (in which case the results are correct).