1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.3-CVS
6 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
7 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
9 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
10 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
11 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
12 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
13 this change in the 4.2.x series).
18 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
19 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
20 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
22 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
25 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
26 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
28 * Major changes in release 4.3.2
32 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
33 more than one start point was given on the command line.
35 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
36 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
37 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
38 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
39 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
40 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
43 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
44 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
46 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
47 now generates an error message.
49 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
50 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
53 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
57 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
58 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
59 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
60 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
61 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
64 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
65 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
66 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
67 which is probably surprising for most users.
70 ** Documentation Fixes
72 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
73 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
76 * Major changes in release 4.3.1
80 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
81 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
82 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
83 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
85 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
86 which have missing expressions, such as
93 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
94 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
95 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
96 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
97 specified the wrong directory).
99 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
100 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
101 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
102 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
103 problem was worse for -exec.
105 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
106 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
108 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
109 Savannah bug #16269).
111 ** Functional changes
113 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
114 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
115 about find's internal state and progress.
117 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
118 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print".
120 ** Performance Enhancements
122 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
123 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
124 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
125 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
126 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
127 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
128 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
129 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
130 and compare the optimised query with:
131 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
133 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
135 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
136 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
137 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
142 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
144 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
145 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
146 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
147 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
148 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
149 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
151 * Major changes in release 4.3.0
153 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
154 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
155 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
156 may change or go away.
158 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
159 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
161 ** Functional Changes
163 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
164 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
165 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
167 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
168 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
170 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
171 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
174 default configuration find oldfind
175 configure --with-fts find oldfind
176 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
178 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
179 can be read, written or executed respectively.
181 * Major changes in release 4.2.27
183 ** Warnings of Future Changes
185 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
186 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
187 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
188 message is given if you do this.
192 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
193 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
194 from the operating system.
196 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
197 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
198 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
200 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
201 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
202 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
204 ** Documentation Changes
206 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
207 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
210 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
211 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
213 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
214 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
217 * Major changes in release 4.2.26
219 ** Public Service Announcements
221 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
222 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
223 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
224 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
226 ** Functional Changes
228 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
229 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
230 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
232 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
233 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
234 information is needed butnot available, find now exits with an error
235 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
238 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
239 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
240 option, which changes other semantics too).
244 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
245 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
247 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
248 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
249 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
250 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
251 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
252 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
253 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
254 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
255 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
256 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
258 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
259 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
260 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
261 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
262 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
263 containing 35396 entries.
265 ** Documentation Changes
267 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
268 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
270 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
271 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
273 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
276 * Major changes in release 4.2.25
280 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
281 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
282 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
284 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
285 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
286 of upper/lower case distinctions.
288 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
291 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
292 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
293 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
297 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
299 * Major changes in release 4.2.24
301 ** Documentation Changes
303 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
304 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
305 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
307 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
310 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
311 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
312 the command's standard input from stdin.
314 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
315 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
317 ** Functional Changes
319 *** Functional changes in locate
321 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
322 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
323 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
324 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
325 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
326 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
327 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
330 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
331 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
332 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
335 *** Functional changes in find
337 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
338 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
339 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
340 recommended practice however).
342 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
343 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
346 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
347 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
348 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
349 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
350 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
351 HSFS implementation).
355 *** Bug Fixes for find
357 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
358 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
359 gnulib version of this function).
361 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
364 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
365 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
367 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
368 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
369 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
370 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
371 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
372 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
373 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
375 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
376 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
377 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
379 * Major changes in release 4.2.23
381 ** Documentation Changes
383 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
386 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
388 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
390 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
391 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
392 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
393 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
396 * Major changes in release 4.2.22
400 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
401 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
402 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
403 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
404 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
405 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
406 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
410 None in this release.
412 ** Functional Changes to locate
414 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
415 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
416 later instances are ignored.
418 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
419 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
420 one or more patterns.
422 ** Documentation Changes
424 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
425 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
426 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
427 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
428 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
431 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
432 ** Functional Changes to find
434 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
435 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
436 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
437 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
439 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
440 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
441 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
442 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
443 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
444 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
447 ** Functional Changes to locate
449 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
450 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
451 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
452 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
453 different set of results).
455 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
456 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
459 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
461 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
462 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
464 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
465 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
467 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
468 ** Internationalization and Localization
469 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
472 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
473 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
475 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
478 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
479 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
480 (Savannah bug #12044).
482 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
483 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
484 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
487 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
488 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
490 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
491 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
492 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
493 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
494 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
496 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
498 ** Functionality Changes
499 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
500 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
501 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
503 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
505 ** Documentation enhancements
506 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
508 ** Internationalization and Localization
509 New Vietnamese message translation.
511 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
513 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
514 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
515 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
516 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
518 ** Documentation improvements
519 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
521 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
523 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
524 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
525 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
526 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
527 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
528 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
531 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
532 ** Functionality Changes
533 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
534 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
536 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
537 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
538 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
541 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
544 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
545 ** Functionality Changes
546 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
547 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
549 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
550 ** Functionality Changes
551 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
553 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
554 distributed tar file more than once.
555 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
556 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
557 ** Documentation improvements
558 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
560 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
561 ** Performance Enhancements
562 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
563 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
564 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
565 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
566 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
568 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
569 ** Functionality Changes
570 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
571 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
572 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
573 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
574 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
575 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
576 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
578 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
579 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
580 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
582 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
584 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
585 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
586 ** Functionality Changes
587 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
588 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
589 a more helpful error message.
590 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
591 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
592 statistics about the locate databases.
593 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
594 ** Documentation improvements
595 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
596 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
598 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
601 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
603 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
604 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
607 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
608 ** Functionality Changes
609 *** 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_".
610 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
611 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
614 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
615 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
616 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
618 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
619 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
620 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
621 ** Documentation improvements
622 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
623 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
625 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
626 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
627 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
630 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
631 ** Functionality Changes
632 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
633 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
634 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
635 ** Documentation improvements
636 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
637 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
638 are not are explained in this chapter.
640 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
642 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
644 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
645 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
647 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
649 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
650 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
651 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
652 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
655 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
656 ** Functionality Changes
657 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
658 find will follow symbolic links.
659 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
661 ** Documentation improvements
662 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
664 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
665 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
666 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
667 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
668 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
669 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
670 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
672 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
673 ** Functionality Changes
674 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
675 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
677 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
678 doesn't support that much).
679 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
680 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
681 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
682 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
683 by the use of the -nowarn option.
684 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
685 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
686 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
687 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
689 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
690 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
691 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
692 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
693 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
694 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
695 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
696 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
697 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
698 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
699 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
701 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
702 systems that have non-writable string constants.
703 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
704 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
705 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
707 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
709 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
710 ** Functionality Changes
711 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
712 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
713 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
714 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
715 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
716 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
717 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
718 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
719 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
720 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
721 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
722 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
723 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
724 directory we've just returned out of).
726 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
728 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
729 ** Documentation improvements
730 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
732 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
733 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
734 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
736 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
737 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
739 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
740 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
741 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
742 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
744 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
746 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
747 requires it, as explained at
748 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
750 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
752 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
753 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
754 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
755 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
756 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
758 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
760 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
761 ** Functionality Changes
762 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
763 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
764 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
765 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
766 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
767 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
768 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
769 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
770 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
771 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
772 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
773 find stats the file. There is also an option
774 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
775 ** Documentation improvements
776 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
777 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
778 The find manual page also now includes a section
779 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
780 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
781 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
782 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
783 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
784 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
786 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
788 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
789 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
790 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
791 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
792 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
793 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
794 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
795 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
796 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
797 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
798 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
799 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
800 database if it fails.
801 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
802 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
804 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
805 This was broken in 4.1.20.
807 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
808 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
809 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
811 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
812 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
813 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
814 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
816 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
818 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
819 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
820 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
822 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
823 correct bug in prune.
824 added --ignore-case option for locate
826 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
827 Add support for large files
829 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
830 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
832 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
833 added internationalization and localization.
835 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
836 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
837 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
839 * Major changes in release 4.1:
841 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
842 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
843 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
844 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
846 * Major changes in release 4.0:
850 *** Man page for updatedb.
851 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
854 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
855 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
856 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
857 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
858 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
859 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
862 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
863 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
864 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
865 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
866 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
867 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
869 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
872 *** Takes command-line options.
875 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
876 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
877 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
879 * Major changes in release 3.8:
881 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
882 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
883 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
885 * Major changes in release 3.7:
887 ** locate can search multiple databases
888 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
889 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
892 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
894 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
895 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
896 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
897 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
898 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf