How can I find all files open within a given directory?

Question

I know I can use lsof to list open files, and I know I can use find to find files by inode within a given directory.

But how can I effectively combine these two programs to list all open files which are open within a given directory? Or is there a better way to answer this question?

Answer 1

Easy. Just pipe the output of the lsof command into grep for further processing like this:

sudo lsof | grep /path/of/directory/you/care/about

Answer 2

lsof has switches for doing this.

• lsof +d 'directory' (will list open files in the folder)
• lsof +D 'directory' (will list open files recursively)