1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.2-CVS
6 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
7 more than one start point was given on the command line.
9 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
10 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
11 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
12 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
13 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
14 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
17 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
18 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
20 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
21 now generates an error message.
23 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
24 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
27 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
31 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
32 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
33 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
34 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
35 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
38 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
39 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
40 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
41 which is probably surprising for most users.
43 ** Documentation Fixes
45 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
46 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
49 * Major changes in release 4.3.1
53 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
54 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
55 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
56 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
58 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
59 which have missing expressions, such as
66 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
67 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
68 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
69 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
70 specified the wrong directory).
72 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
73 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
74 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
75 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
76 problem was worse for -exec.
78 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
79 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
81 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
86 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
87 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
88 about find's internal state and progress.
90 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
91 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print".
93 ** Performance Enhancements
95 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
96 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
97 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
98 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
99 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
100 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
101 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
102 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
103 and compare the optimised query with:
104 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
106 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
108 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
109 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
110 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
115 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
117 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
118 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
119 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
120 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
121 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
122 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
124 * Major changes in release 4.3.0
126 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
127 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
128 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
129 may change or go away.
131 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
132 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
134 ** Functional Changes
136 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
137 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
138 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
140 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
141 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
143 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
144 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
147 default configuration find oldfind
148 configure --with-fts find oldfind
149 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
151 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
152 can be read, written or executed respectively.
154 * Major changes in release 4.2.27
156 ** Warnings of Future Changes
158 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
159 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
160 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
161 message is given if you do this.
165 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
166 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
167 from the operating system.
169 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
170 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
171 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
173 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
174 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
175 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
177 ** Documentation Changes
179 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
180 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
183 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
184 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
186 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
187 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
190 * Major changes in release 4.2.26
192 ** Public Service Announcements
194 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
195 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
196 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
197 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
199 ** Functional Changes
201 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
202 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
203 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
205 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
206 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
207 information is needed butnot available, find now exits with an error
208 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
211 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
212 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
213 option, which changes other semantics too).
217 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
218 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
220 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
221 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
222 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
223 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
224 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
225 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
226 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
227 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
228 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
229 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
231 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
232 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
233 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
234 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
235 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
236 containing 35396 entries.
238 ** Documentation Changes
240 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
241 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
243 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
244 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
246 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
249 * Major changes in release 4.2.25
253 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
254 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
255 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
257 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
258 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
259 of upper/lower case distinctions.
261 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
264 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
265 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
266 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
270 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
272 * Major changes in release 4.2.24
274 ** Documentation Changes
276 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
277 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
278 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
280 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
283 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
284 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
285 the command's standard input from stdin.
287 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
288 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
290 ** Functional Changes
292 *** Functional changes in locate
294 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
295 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
296 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
297 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
298 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
299 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
300 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
303 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
304 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
305 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
308 *** Functional changes in find
310 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
311 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
312 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
313 recommended practice however).
315 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
316 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
319 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
320 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
321 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
322 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
323 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
324 HSFS implementation).
328 *** Bug Fixes for find
330 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
331 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
332 gnulib version of this function).
334 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
337 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
338 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
340 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
341 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
342 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
343 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
344 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
345 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
346 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
348 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
349 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
350 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
352 * Major changes in release 4.2.23
354 ** Documentation Changes
356 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
359 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
361 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
363 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
364 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
365 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
366 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
369 * Major changes in release 4.2.22
373 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
374 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
375 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
376 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
377 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
378 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
379 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
383 None in this release.
385 ** Functional Changes to locate
387 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
388 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
389 later instances are ignored.
391 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
392 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
393 one or more patterns.
395 ** Documentation Changes
397 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
398 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
399 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
400 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
401 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
404 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
405 ** Functional Changes to find
407 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
408 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
409 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
410 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
412 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
413 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
414 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
415 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
416 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
417 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
420 ** Functional Changes to locate
422 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
423 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
424 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
425 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
426 different set of results).
428 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
429 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
432 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
434 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
435 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
437 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
438 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
440 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
441 ** Internationalization and Localization
442 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
445 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
446 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
448 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
451 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
452 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
453 (Savannah bug #12044).
455 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
456 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
457 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
460 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
461 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
463 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
464 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
465 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
466 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
467 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
469 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
471 ** Functionality Changes
472 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
473 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
474 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
476 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
478 ** Documentation enhancements
479 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
481 ** Internationalization and Localization
482 New Vietnamese message translation.
484 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
486 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
487 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
488 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
489 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
491 ** Documentation improvements
492 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
494 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
496 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
497 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
498 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
499 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
500 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
501 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
504 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
505 ** Functionality Changes
506 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
507 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
509 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
510 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
511 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
514 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
517 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
518 ** Functionality Changes
519 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
520 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
522 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
523 ** Functionality Changes
524 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
526 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
527 distributed tar file more than once.
528 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
529 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
530 ** Documentation improvements
531 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
533 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
534 ** Performance Enhancements
535 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
536 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
537 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
538 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
539 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
541 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
542 ** Functionality Changes
543 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
544 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
545 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
546 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
547 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
548 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
549 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
551 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
552 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
553 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
555 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
557 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
558 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
559 ** Functionality Changes
560 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
561 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
562 a more helpful error message.
563 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
564 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
565 statistics about the locate databases.
566 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
567 ** Documentation improvements
568 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
569 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
571 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
574 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
576 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
577 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
580 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
581 ** Functionality Changes
582 *** xargs no longer treats a line containing only an underscore as a logical end-of-file. To obtain the behaviour that was previously the default, use "-E_".
583 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
584 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
587 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
588 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
589 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
591 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
592 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
593 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
594 ** Documentation improvements
595 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
596 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
598 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
599 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
600 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
603 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
604 ** Functionality Changes
605 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
606 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
607 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
608 ** Documentation improvements
609 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
610 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
611 are not are explained in this chapter.
613 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
615 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
617 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
618 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
620 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
622 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
623 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
624 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
625 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
628 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
629 ** Functionality Changes
630 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
631 find will follow symbolic links.
632 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
634 ** Documentation improvements
635 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
637 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
638 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
639 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
640 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
641 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
642 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
643 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
645 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
646 ** Functionality Changes
647 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
648 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
650 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
651 doesn't support that much).
652 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
653 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
654 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
655 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
656 by the use of the -nowarn option.
657 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
658 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
659 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
660 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
662 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
663 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
664 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
665 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
666 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
667 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
668 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
669 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
670 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
671 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
672 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
674 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
675 systems that have non-writable string constants.
676 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
677 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
678 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
680 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
682 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
683 ** Functionality Changes
684 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
685 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
686 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
687 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
688 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
689 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
690 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
691 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
692 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
693 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
694 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
695 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
696 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
697 directory we've just returned out of).
699 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
701 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
702 ** Documentation improvements
703 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
705 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
706 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
707 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
709 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
710 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
712 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
713 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
714 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
715 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
717 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
719 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
720 requires it, as explained at
721 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
723 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
725 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
726 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
727 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
728 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
729 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
731 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
733 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
734 ** Functionality Changes
735 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
736 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
737 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
738 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
739 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
740 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
741 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
742 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
743 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
744 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
745 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
746 find stats the file. There is also an option
747 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
748 ** Documentation improvements
749 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
750 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
751 The find manual page also now includes a section
752 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
753 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
754 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
755 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
756 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
757 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
759 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
761 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
762 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
763 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
764 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
765 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
766 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
767 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
768 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
769 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
770 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
771 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
772 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
773 database if it fails.
774 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
775 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
777 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
778 This was broken in 4.1.20.
780 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
781 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
782 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
784 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
785 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
786 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
787 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
789 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
791 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
792 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
793 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
795 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
796 correct bug in prune.
797 added --ignore-case option for locate
799 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
800 Add support for large files
802 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
803 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
805 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
806 added internationalization and localization.
808 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
809 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
810 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
812 * Major changes in release 4.1:
814 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
815 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
816 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
817 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
819 * Major changes in release 4.0:
823 *** Man page for updatedb.
824 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
827 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
828 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
829 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
830 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
831 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
832 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
835 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
836 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
837 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
838 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
839 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
840 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
842 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
845 *** Takes command-line options.
848 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
849 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
850 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
852 * Major changes in release 3.8:
854 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
855 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
856 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
858 * Major changes in release 3.7:
860 ** locate can search multiple databases
861 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
862 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
865 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
867 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
868 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
869 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
870 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
871 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf