PT-FIND(1)

📦

version 3.7.1_4 · 5 versions

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🌸 NAME 🌸 — pt-find(1)

Okay bestie, this is pt-find(1) from the User Contributed Perl Documentation, and it's literally the “find MySQL tables and execute actions, like GNU find” tool. 🫶 No cap: pt-find finds MySQL tables and executes actions, like GNU find.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

Usage: pt-find [OPTIONS] [DATABASES]

pt-find searches for MySQL tables and executes actions, like GNU find. The default action is to print the database and table name.

Find all tables created more than a day ago, which use the MyISAM engine, and print their names:

pt-find --ctime +1 --engine MyISAM

Find MyISAM tables and convert them to InnoDB:

pt-find --engine MyISAM --exec "ALTER TABLE %D.%N ENGINE=InnoDB"

Find tables created by a process that no longer exists, following the name_sid_pid naming convention, and remove them:

pt-find --connection-id '\D_\d+_(\d+)$' --server-id '\D_(\d+)_\d+$' --exec-plus "DROP TABLE %s"

Find empty tables in the test and junk databases, and delete them:

pt-find --empty junk test --exec-plus "DROP TABLE %s"

Find tables more than five gigabytes in total size:

pt-find --tablesize +5G

Find all tables and print their total data and index size, and sort largest tables first (sort is a different program, by the way).

pt-find --printf "%T\t%D.%N\n" | sort -rn

As above, but this time, insert the data back into the database for posterity:

pt-find --noquote --exec "INSERT INTO sysdata.tblsize(db, tbl, size) VALUES('%D', '%N', %T)"

🚨 RISKS 🚨

Percona Toolkit is mature, proven in the real world, and well tested, but all database tools can pose a risk to the system and the database server. Before using this tool, please:

Read the tool's documentation
Review the tool's known "BUGS"
Test the tool on a non-production server
Backup your production server and verify the backups

Real talk: this is the vibe-check-before-you-wreck-check part. Do the four things. Your future self will thank you. 💅

💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

pt-find looks for MySQL tables that pass the tests you specify, and executes the actions you specify. The default action is to print the database and table name to STDOUT.

pt-find is simpler than GNU find. It doesn't allow you to specify complicated expressions on the command line.

pt-find uses SHOW TABLES when possible, and SHOW TABLE STATUS when needed.

🧠 OPTION TYPES 🧠

There are three types of options: normal options, which determine some behavior or setting; tests, which determine whether a table should be included in the list of tables found; and actions, which do something to the tables pt-find finds.

pt-find uses standard Getopt::Long option parsing, so you should use double dashes in front of long option names, unlike GNU find.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

This tool accepts additional command-line arguments. Refer to the "SYNOPSIS" and usage information for details.

--ask-pass — Prompt for a password when connecting to MySQL.
--[no]buffer-stdout — default: yes — Enables STDOUT buffering. Disable this option if you want to see live progress when using output post-processing tools such as tee or kubectl logs.
--case-insensitive — Specifies that all regular expression searches are case-insensitive.
--charset — short form: -A; type: string — Default character set. If the value is utf8, sets Perl's binmode on STDOUT to utf8, passes the mysql_enable_utf8 option to DBD::mysql, and runs SET NAMES UTF8 after connecting to MySQL. Any other value sets binmode on STDOUT without the utf8 layer, and runs SET NAMES after connecting to MySQL.
--config — type: Array — Read this comma-separated list of config files; if specified, this must be the first option on the command line.
--database — short form: -D; type: string — Connect to this database.
--day-start — Measure times (for --mmin, etc) from the beginning of today rather than from the current time.
--defaults-file — short form: -F; type: string — Only read mysql options from the given file. You must give an absolute pathname.
--help — Show help and exit.
--host — short form: -h; type: string — Connect to host.
--mysql_ssl — short form: -s; type: int — Create SSL MySQL connection.
--or — Combine tests with OR, not AND.

By default, tests are evaluated as though there were an AND between them. This option switches it to OR.

Option parsing is not implemented by pt-find itself, so you cannot specify complicated expressions with parentheses and mixtures of OR and AND.

--password — short form: -p; type: string — Password to use when connecting. If password contains commas they must be escaped with a backslash: exam\,ple.
--pid — type: string — Create the given PID file. The tool won't start if the PID file already exists and the PID it contains is different than the current PID. However, if the PID file exists and the PID it contains is no longer running, the tool will overwrite the PID file with the current PID. The PID file is removed automatically when the tool exits.
--port — short form: -P; type: int — Port number to use for connection.
--[no]quote — default: yes — Quotes MySQL identifier names with MySQL's standard backtick character.

Quoting happens after tests are run, and before actions are run.

--set-vars — type: Array — Set the MySQL variables in this comma-separated list of "variable=value" pairs.

By default, the tool sets:

wait_timeout=10000

Variables specified on the command line override these defaults. For example, specifying --set-vars wait_timeout=500 overrides the default value of 10000.

The tool prints a warning and continues if a variable cannot be set.

--socket — short form: -S; type: string — Socket file to use for connection.
--user — short form: -u; type: string — User for login if not current user.
--version — Show version and exit.
--[no]version-check — default: yes — Check for the latest version of Percona Toolkit, MySQL, and other programs.

This is a standard "check for updates automatically" feature, with two additional features. First, the tool checks its own version and also the versions of the following software: operating system, Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM), MySQL, Perl, MySQL driver for Perl (DBD::mysql), and Percona Toolkit. Second, it checks for and warns about versions with known problems. For example, MySQL 5.5.25 had a critical bug and was re-released as 5.5.25a.

A secure connection to Percona’s Version Check database server is done to perform these checks. Each request is logged by the server, including software version numbers and unique ID of the checked system. The ID is generated by the Percona Toolkit installation script or when the Version Check database call is done for the first time.

Any updates or known problems are printed to STDOUT before the tool's normal output. This feature should never interfere with the normal operation of the tool.

For more information, visit https://www.percona.com/doc/percona-toolkit/LATEST/version-check.html.

🧪 TESTS 🧪

Most tests check some criterion against a column of SHOW TABLE STATUS output. Numeric arguments can be specified as +n for greater than n, -n for less than n, and n for exactly n. All numeric options can take an optional suffix multiplier of k, M or G (1_024, 1_048_576, and 1_073_741_824 respectively). All patterns are Perl regular expressions (see man perlre) unless specified as SQL LIKE patterns.

Dates and times are all measured relative to the same instant, when pt-find first asks the database server what time it is. All date and time manipulation is done in SQL, so if you say to find tables modified 5 days ago, that translates to SELECT DATE_SUB(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, INTERVAL 5 DAY). If you specify --day-start, of course it's relative to CURRENT_DATE instead.

However, table sizes and other metrics are not consistent at an instant in time. It can take some time for MySQL to process all the SHOW queries, and pt-find can't do anything about that. These measurements are as of the time they're taken.

If you need some test that's not in this list, file a feature request at https://jira.percona.com/projects/PT.

--autoinc — type: string; group: Tests — Table's next AUTO_INCREMENT is n. This tests the Auto_increment column.
--avgrowlen — type: size; group: Tests — Table avg row len is n bytes. This tests the Avg_row_length column. The specified size can be "NULL" to test where Avg_row_length IS NULL.
--checksum — type: string; group: Tests — Table checksum is n. This tests the Checksum column.
--cmin — type: size; group: Tests — Table was created n minutes ago. This tests the Create_time column.
--collation — type: string; group: Tests — Table collation matches pattern. This tests the Collation column.
--column-name — type: string; group: Tests — A column name in the table matches pattern.
--column-type — type: string; group: Tests — A column in the table matches this type (case-insensitive).

Examples of types are: varchar, char, int, smallint, bigint, decimal, year, timestamp, text, enum.

--comment — type: string; group: Tests — Table comment matches pattern. This tests the Comment column.
--connection-id — type: string; group: Tests — Table name has nonexistent MySQL connection ID. This tests the table name for a pattern. The argument to this test must be a Perl regular expression that captures digits like this: (\d+). If the table name matches the pattern, these captured digits are taken to be the MySQL connection ID of some process. If the connection doesn't exist according to SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST, the test returns true. If the connection ID is greater than pt-find's own connection ID, the test returns false for safety.

Why would you want to do this? If you use MySQL statement-based replication, you probably know the trouble temporary tables can cause. You might choose to work around this by creating real tables with unique names, instead of temporary tables. One way to do this is to append your connection ID to the end of the table, thusly: scratch_table_12345. This assures the table name is unique and lets you have a way to find which connection it was associated with. And perhaps most importantly, if the connection no longer exists, you can assume the connection died without cleaning up its tables, and this table is a candidate for removal.

okay so the argument you'd hand to --connection-id is literally "\D_(\d+)$". What that does: it finds tables that end in a run of digits, and right before those digits there's an underscore preceded by some non-number character. That last bit matters, bestie — it's the thing that stops you from looking at tables with a date slapped on the end, which people love to do. Like baron_scratch_2007_05_07, for example. Keep your scratch tables separate, it's cleaner 💅

If you go this route, make sure the user pt-find runs as has the PROCESS privilege! Otherwise it'll only see connections belonging to the same user, and it might think some tables are ready to yeet when they're still in use. For safety, pt-find checks this for you 🫶

🎬 ACTIONS 🎬

Real talk: the --exec-plus action happens after everything else, but other than that, actions happen in an indeterminate order 😭 no ordering guarantees, bestie. If you genuinely need determinism, file a feature request at <https://jira.percona.com/projects/PT>.

--exec — type: string; group: Actions

Execute this SQL with each item found. The SQL can contain escapes and formatting directives (peep --printf for those).

--exec-dsn — type: string; group: Actions

Specify a DSN in key-value format to use when executing SQL with --exec and --exec-plus. Any values you don't specify get inherited from the command-line arguments.

--exec-plus — type: string; group: Actions

Execute this SQL with all items at once. This option is not like --exec. There are no escaping or formatting directives here — the only special placeholder is %s, and it stands in for the list of database and table names. The list of tables found gets joined together with commas and substituted wherever you put %s.

You might use this, for example, to drop every table you found:

DROP TABLE %s

It's sort of like GNU find's -exec command {} + syntax, iykyk.

--print — group: Actions

Print the database and table name, followed by a newline. This is the default action if you don't specify any other action. 💖

--printf — type: string; group: Actions

Print format on the standard output, interpreting '\' escapes and '%' directives. Escapes are backslashed characters, like \n and \t. Perl interprets these, so you can use any escapes Perl knows about. Directives get replaced by %s, and as of this writing you can't add any special formatting instructions, like field widths or alignment. Sorry bestie 💀

Here's the directive list. Note that most of them simply come from columns of SHOW TABLE STATUS. If the column is NULL or doesn't exist, you get an empty string in the output. And a % character followed by anything not in this list gets discarded (but the other character still gets printed).

a — Auto_increment
A — Avg_row_length
c — Checksum
C — Create_time
D — Database — the database name in which the table lives
d — Data_length
E — Engine — in older versions of MySQL, this is Type
F — Data_free
f — Innodb_free — parsed from the Comment field
I — Index_length
K — Check_time
L — Collation
M — Max_data_length
N — Name
O — Comment
P — Create_options
R — Row_format
S — Rows
T — Table_length — Data_length+Index_length
U — Update_time
V — Version

🌸 DSN OPTIONS 🌸

These DSN options get used to create a DSN. You give each one like "option=value". The options are case-sensitive, so P and p are absolutely not the same option, don't do that to me. There cannot be whitespace before or after the "=", and if the value contains whitespace it must be quoted. DSN options are comma-separated. See the percona-toolkit manpage for full details 🫶

A — dsn: charset; copy: yes

Default character set.

D — dsn: database; copy: yes

Default database.

F — dsn: mysql_read_default_file; copy: yes

Only read default options from the given file.

h — dsn: host; copy: yes

Connect to host.

p — dsn: password; copy: yes

Password to use when connecting. If the password contains commas they must be escaped with a backslash: "exam\,ple"

P — dsn: port; copy: yes

Port number to use for connection.

S — dsn: mysql_socket; copy: yes

Socket file to use for connection.

u — dsn: user; copy: yes

User for login if not the current user.

s — dsn: mysql_ssl; copy: yes

Create SSL connection.

🐛 ENVIRONMENT 🐛

The environment variable PTDEBUG enables verbose debugging output to STDERR. Wanna enable debugging and capture all of it into a file? Run the tool like this:

PTDEBUG=1 pt-find ... > FILE 2>&1

⚠️ Be careful: debugging output is voluminous and can generate several megabytes of output. Like, several. Megabytes. 😭

🚨 ATTENTION 🚨

Using PTDEBUG might expose passwords. When debug is enabled, all command line parameters are shown in the output. So uh, vibe check your terminal before you paste that anywhere 🙈

🧚 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 🧚

You need Perl, DBI, DBD::mysql, and some core packages that ought to be installed in any reasonably new version of Perl. That's it, that's the list ✨

💀 BUGS 💀

For a list of known bugs, see <https://jira.percona.com/projects/PT/issues>.

Please report bugs at <https://jira.percona.com/projects/PT>. Include the following info in your bug report, bestie, or they literally cannot help you:

Complete command-line used to run the tool
Tool --version
MySQL version of all servers involved
Output from the tool including STDERR
Input files (log/dump/config files, etc.)

If possible, include debugging output by running the tool with PTDEBUG; see ENVIRONMENT.

🌈 DOWNLOADING 🌈

Visit <http://www.percona.com/software/percona-toolkit/> to download the latest release of Percona Toolkit. Or, get the latest release straight from the command line:

wget percona.com/get/percona-toolkit.tar.gz

wget percona.com/get/percona-toolkit.rpm

wget percona.com/get/percona-toolkit.deb

You can also grab individual tools from the latest release:

wget percona.com/get/TOOL

Replace "TOOL" with the name of any tool. Slay 🎀

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Baron Schwartz

💖 ABOUT PERCONA TOOLKIT 💖

Okay so context bestie, bc you deserve to know: this tool is part of Percona Toolkit, which is literally a whole collection of advanced command-line tools for MySQL, all cooked up by Percona. 🍓

The lore is kinda iconic ngl — Percona Toolkit was forked from two projects back in June, 2011: Maatkit and Aspersa. Those two were created by Baron Schwartz, and they were primarily developed by him and Daniel Nichter. King behavior, fr fr. 👑

Wanna see what else Percona's got cooking? The free, open-source software lives at http://www.percona.com/software/ — go peek, it's giving generous. ✨

🎀 COPYRIGHT, LICENSE, AND WARRANTY 🎀

Real talk, here's the legal bits — and yes, you actually have to read them because they're the whole vibe check for what you're allowed to do:

This program is copyright 2011-2026 Percona LLC and/or its affiliates, and 2007-2011 Baron Schwartz.

This is the part where the manpage yells in all caps, and honestly? Respect:

THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Translation: no promises, no safety net, no cap. 😭 You're on your own if it goes sideways.

Now the fun part — it's free software! You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2; OR the Perl Artistic License. Both! Your choice! Choose your fighter! 💅

On UNIX and similar systems, you can read these licenses yourself by running man perlgpl or man perlartistic. Very demure, very mindful, very documented.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License, version 2 along with this program; if not, check https://www.gnu.org/licenses/. 🫶

⭐ VERSION ⭐

pt-find 3.7.1-4

That's her. That's the version. Slay. 🌸

💀 POD ERRORS 💀

Not me having to tell you this, but: hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below. Not the manpage's finest moment, but we move. 🙈

Around line 4715:

Non-ASCII character seen before =encoding in 'Percona’s'. Assuming UTF-8

Yeah, a curly apostrophe in Percona’s snuck past the encoding declaration and Perl just shrugged and assumed UTF-8. Honestly? Relatable. The apostrophe had main character energy and the parser simply let it through. ✨

And that's the whole page, bestie — every last crumb of it. 🧚 Run pt-find responsibly, read your licenses, and remember: no warranty, but all the vibes. 🌈

This fine document is perl v5.42.2, 2026-09-01. Signing off — mwah! 💋

📦 where this page comes from

arch rolling: percona-toolkit 3.7.1_4-1 · GPL
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 on 2026-11-04: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms