1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
3 * Major changes in release 4.3.14-CVS
5 * Major changes in release 4.3.13, 2008-02-14
9 #22057: Actually rename the old locate database to the new one
10 atomically, instead of just claiming the rename is atomic in a
13 #22056: -Xtime tests are off by one second (e.g. rm -f x; touch x;
14 find x -mtime 0 should print x).
16 #21960: xargs should collect the exit status of child processes even if
17 the total count of unreaped children has not yet reached the maximum
20 ** Documentation Fixes
22 Documented various useful techniques with invoking "sh -c" from
23 xargs in the Texinfo documentation.
27 Updated the German, Irish, Dutch, Polish and Vietnamese translations.
30 * Major changes in release 4.3.12, 2007-12-19
34 #15384: Find misbehaves when parent directory is not readable.
36 ** Documentation Fixes
38 More examples in the xargs manual page, including a portable analogue
43 Updated translations: Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Vietnamese.
46 * Major changes in release 4.3.11, 2007-12-02
50 When the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, "find -perm
51 +a+w" is rejected as invalid. Some other similar mode strings
52 starting with '+' which are not valid in POSIX are also rejected.
54 The -prune action now always evaluates as true (this is also a
60 #21568: Switch to checking the gnulib code out with native git, not
61 CVS. This affects mainly those who check findutils code out of CVS.
62 This is not the first time this bug has been fixed (the previous fix
63 used "cvs update -D", which git-cvspserver silently does not
66 #21039: Setting the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable now turns off
67 warnings by default, because POSIX requires that only diagnostic
68 messages (and -ok prompts) are printed on STDERR, and diagnostic
69 messages must also result in a nonzero exit status.
71 #20970: Trailing slash on directory arguments breaks -name. "find
72 foo/ -name foo" now correctly matches foo and printf foo/. See POSIX
73 interp http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/uploads/40/14959/AI-186.txt
75 #20865: Using both -delete and -prune without explicitly using -depth
76 is now an error. Traditionally, -delete has always turned -depth on
77 anyway, so this is not a functional change. However, using -depth
78 (implicitly or explicitly) makes -prune a no-op. This change is
79 intended to avoid nasty surprises for people who test with
80 "-print" and then change it to "-delete" when they are happy.
82 #20803: POSIX requires that -prune always returns true. Previously it
83 returned false when -depth was in effect and true otherwise.
85 #20802: If -delete fails, find's exit status will now be non-zero.
86 However, find still skips trying to delete ".".
88 ** Documentation Fixes
89 #21635: Some of the documentation files had missing copying
90 conditions. The missing files now have copying headers, and these
91 are compatible with each other (GNU FDL 1.2).
93 #21634: No copy of FDL 1.2 included with the source code
95 #21633: Missing copyright/license header in some documentation.
97 #21628: find -perm /000 matches all files rather than none, since
98 findutils-4.3.3. The Texinfo documentation is now consistent with the
99 manual page on this point.
101 #21270: Formatting fixes to the xargs.1 manual page, including making
102 options bold instead of italic and making OPTIONS a section header
103 rather than a subsection.
105 * Major changes in release 4.3.10, 2007-11-13
109 #21568: findutils gnulib code does not match the date in
110 import-gnulib.config. We now check out the gnulib code via
113 * Major changes in release 4.3.9, 2007-11-11
117 Findutils version 4.3.9 is released under version 3 of the GNU General
122 #20834: Avoid segmentation violation for -execdir when $PATH is
123 unset. Assume that the PATH is safe in this situation.
125 #20310: configure uses hosts's support status for "sort -z" when
126 generating the updatedb script for use on the target. This is
127 inappropriate when cross-compiling, so avoid doing that.
129 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
130 ordering comparison of function pointers.
132 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
133 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
135 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
136 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
137 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
138 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise. Likewise for find
139 (for example, with the -ok action).
141 #20547: The version information printed by find, xargs, locate,
142 updatedb, frcode and code now complies with the GNU Project's coding
145 #20662: Avoid memory leak in find -name and other places affected by
146 gnulib dirname module. The leak had been present since 4.3.1.
148 #20751: Avoid memory corruption in find -ls that has been present
151 #20871: Assertion failure introduced in 4.3.3, when oldfind is invoked
152 in a directory where the parent directory lacks search permission.
156 #20594: Allow fine-tuning of the default argument size used by xargs
157 and find at ./configure time.
159 #20688: The warning printed by -name or -iname when the pattern to
160 match contains a slash can now be silenced by -nowarn. This warning
161 was originally introduced unconditionally in 4.2.21.
163 Translation of locate --limit problems is improved.
165 POSIX will standardise -path, so the documentation no longer claims
166 that -wholename is the 'canonical' test, and -ipath no longer
169 ** Documentation Fixes
171 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
172 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
175 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
176 recent findutils release first.
178 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
180 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
182 The locate command's manual page now has a HISTORY section.
184 #20951: Very bad/unclear/confusing documentation of security checks in
187 #20865: Better documentation on the fact that -delete implies -depth
188 and that -delete interacts badly with -prune.
190 #20552: Fixed typos, formatting and section ordering issues in the
193 #20529: removed spurious 'o' in description of "xargs -a" in
196 #20232: The --max-database-age option of locate was added in release
197 4.3.3, but this file (NEWS) did not previously mention this fact.
201 Updated Dutch translation.
204 * Major changes in release 4.3.8, 2007-06-12
208 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
209 a buffer overrun, but at this time no exploit mechanism is known.
211 * Major changes in release 4.3.7, 2007-06-09
213 ** Functional changes
215 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
216 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
217 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
218 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
219 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
224 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
225 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
226 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
227 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
228 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
229 has potential security implications.
231 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
233 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
234 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
236 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
240 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
242 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
244 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
247 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
248 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
250 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
251 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
252 system does not provide it.
254 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
256 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
258 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
259 some non-GCC compilers
261 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
263 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
265 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
267 #19871: Typos in find.1
269 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
270 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
272 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
274 * Major changes in release 4.3.6, 2007-05-21
278 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
281 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
282 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
283 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
284 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
285 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
286 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
288 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
289 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
291 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
292 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
293 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
298 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
301 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
304 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
305 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
306 replacement for stdbool.h.
308 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
309 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
311 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
312 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
313 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
315 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
319 * Major changes in release 4.3.5, 2007-05-05
321 ** Functional changes
323 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
324 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
327 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
328 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
332 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
333 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
335 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
336 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
339 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
342 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
343 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
344 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
346 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
347 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
350 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
351 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
352 generating an assertion failure.
354 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
356 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
358 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
359 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
362 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
363 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
364 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
365 report was not mentioned.
367 ** Documentation Fixes
369 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
370 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
372 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
373 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
375 * Major changes in release 4.3.4, 2007-04-21
379 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
381 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
383 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
384 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
386 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
387 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
390 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
391 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
393 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
394 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
397 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
398 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
400 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
403 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
405 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
406 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
411 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
414 * Major changes in release 4.3.3, 2007-04-15
416 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
420 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
421 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
423 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
426 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
427 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
429 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
431 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
432 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
433 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
436 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
438 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
440 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
441 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
442 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
444 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
445 (see "Functional changes" below)
447 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
450 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
451 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
452 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
453 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
454 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
459 ** Functional changes
461 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
462 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
464 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
465 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
466 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
467 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
468 this change in the 4.2.x series).
470 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
471 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
472 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
474 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
483 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
484 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
485 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
486 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
489 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
492 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
493 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
496 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
497 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
498 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
499 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
502 If you configure the source code and then run the tests with "make
503 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
506 A new option, --max-database-age, has been added to locate.
509 * Major changes in release 4.3.2, 2006-11-25
513 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
514 more than one start point was given on the command line.
516 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
517 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
518 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
519 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
520 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
521 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
524 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
525 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
527 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
528 now generates an error message.
530 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
531 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
534 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
536 ** Functional changes
538 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
539 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
540 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
541 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
542 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
545 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
546 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
547 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
548 which is probably surprising for most users.
551 ** Documentation Fixes
553 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
554 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
557 * Major changes in release 4.3.1, 2006-08-06
561 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
562 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
563 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
564 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
566 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
567 which have missing expressions, such as
574 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
575 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
576 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
577 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
578 specified the wrong directory).
580 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
581 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
582 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
583 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
584 problem was worse for -exec.
586 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
587 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
589 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
590 Savannah bug #16269).
592 ** Functional changes
594 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
595 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
596 about find's internal state and progress.
598 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
599 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
601 ** Performance Enhancements
603 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
604 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
605 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
606 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
607 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
608 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
609 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
610 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
611 and compare the optimised query with:
612 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
614 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
616 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
617 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
618 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
623 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
625 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
626 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
627 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
628 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
629 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
630 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
632 * Major changes in release 4.3.0, 2005-12-12
634 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
635 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
636 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
637 may change or go away.
639 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
640 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
642 ** Functional Changes
644 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
645 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
646 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
648 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
649 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
651 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
652 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
655 default configuration find oldfind
656 configure --with-fts find oldfind
657 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
659 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
660 can be read, written or executed respectively.
662 * Major changes in release 4.2.27, 2005-12-06
664 ** Warnings of Future Changes
666 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
667 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
668 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
669 message is given if you do this.
673 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
674 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
675 from the operating system.
677 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
678 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
679 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
681 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
682 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
683 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
685 ** Documentation Changes
687 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
688 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
691 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
692 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
694 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
695 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
698 * Major changes in release 4.2.26, 2005-11-19
700 ** Public Service Announcements
702 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
703 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
704 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
705 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
707 ** Functional Changes
709 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
710 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
711 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
713 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
714 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
715 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
716 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
719 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
720 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
721 option, which changes other semantics too).
725 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
726 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
728 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
729 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
730 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
731 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
732 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
733 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
734 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
735 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
736 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
737 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
739 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
740 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
741 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
742 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
743 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
744 containing 35396 entries.
746 ** Documentation Changes
748 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
749 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
751 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
752 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
754 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
757 * Major changes in release 4.2.25, 2005-09-03
761 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
762 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
763 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
765 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
766 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
767 of upper/lower case distinctions.
769 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
772 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
773 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
774 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
778 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
780 * Major changes in release 4.2.24, 2005-07-29
782 ** Documentation Changes
784 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
785 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
786 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
788 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
791 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
792 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
793 the command's standard input from stdin.
795 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
796 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
798 ** Functional Changes
800 *** Functional changes in locate
802 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
803 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
804 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
805 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
806 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
807 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
808 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
811 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
812 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
813 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
816 *** Functional changes in find
818 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
819 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
820 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
821 recommended practice however).
823 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
824 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
827 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
828 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
829 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
830 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
831 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
832 HSFS implementation).
836 *** Bug Fixes for find
838 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
839 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
840 gnulib version of this function).
842 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
845 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
846 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
848 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
849 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
850 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
851 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
852 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
853 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
854 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
856 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
857 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
858 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
860 * Major changes in release 4.2.23, 2005-06-19
862 ** Documentation Changes
864 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
867 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
869 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
871 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
872 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
873 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
874 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
877 * Major changes in release 4.2.22, 2005-06-12
881 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
882 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
883 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
884 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
885 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
886 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
887 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
891 None in this release.
893 ** Functional Changes to locate
895 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
896 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
897 later instances are ignored.
899 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
900 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
901 one or more patterns.
903 ** Documentation Changes
905 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
906 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
907 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
908 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
909 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
912 * Major changes in release 4.2.21, 2005-06-07
913 ** Functional Changes to find
915 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
916 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
917 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
918 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
920 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
921 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
922 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
923 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
924 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
925 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
928 ** Functional Changes to locate
930 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
931 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
932 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
933 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
934 different set of results).
936 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
937 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
940 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
942 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
943 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
945 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
946 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
948 * Major changes in release 4.2.20, 2005-03-17
949 ** Internationalization and Localization
950 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
953 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
954 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
956 * Major changes in release 4.2.19, 2005-03-07
959 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
960 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
961 (Savannah bug #12044).
963 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
964 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
965 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
968 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
969 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
971 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
972 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
973 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
974 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
975 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
977 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
979 ** Functionality Changes
980 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
981 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
982 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
984 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
986 ** Documentation enhancements
987 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
989 ** Internationalization and Localization
990 New Vietnamese message translation.
992 * Major changes in release 4.2.18, 2005-02-16
994 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
995 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
996 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
997 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
999 ** Documentation improvements
1000 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
1002 * Major changes in release 4.2.17, 2005-02-08
1004 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
1005 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
1006 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
1007 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
1008 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
1009 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
1012 * Major changes in release 4.2.16, 2005-02-05
1013 ** Functionality Changes
1014 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
1015 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
1017 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
1018 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
1019 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
1022 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
1025 * Major changes in release 4.2.15, 2005-01-29
1026 ** Functionality Changes
1027 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
1028 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
1030 * Major changes in release 4.2.14, 2005-01-25
1031 ** Functionality Changes
1032 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
1034 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
1035 distributed tar file more than once.
1036 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
1037 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
1038 ** Documentation improvements
1039 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
1041 * Major changes in release 4.2.13, 2005-01-23
1042 ** Performance Enhancements
1043 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
1044 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
1045 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
1046 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
1047 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
1049 * Major changes in release 4.2.12, 2005-01-22
1050 ** Functionality Changes
1051 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
1052 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
1053 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
1054 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
1055 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
1056 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
1057 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
1059 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
1060 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
1061 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
1063 * Major changes in release 4.2.11, 2004-12-12
1065 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
1066 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
1067 ** Functionality Changes
1068 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
1069 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
1070 a more helpful error message.
1071 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
1072 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
1073 statistics about the locate databases.
1074 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
1075 ** Documentation improvements
1076 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
1077 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
1079 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
1082 * Major changes in release 4.2.10, 2004-12-06
1084 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
1085 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
1088 * Major changes in release 4.2.9, 2004-12-05
1089 ** Functionality Changes
1090 *** 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_".
1091 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
1092 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
1095 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
1096 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
1097 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
1099 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
1100 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
1101 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
1102 ** Documentation improvements
1103 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
1104 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
1106 * Major changes in release 4.2.8, 2004-11-24
1107 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
1108 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
1111 * Major changes in release 4.2.7, 2004-11-21
1112 ** Functionality Changes
1113 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
1114 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
1115 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
1116 ** Documentation improvements
1117 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
1118 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
1119 are not are explained in this chapter.
1121 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
1123 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
1125 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
1126 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
1128 * Major changes in release 4.2.6, 2004-11-21
1130 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
1131 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
1132 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
1133 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
1136 * Major changes in release 4.2.5, 2004-11-11
1137 ** Functionality Changes
1138 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
1139 find will follow symbolic links.
1140 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
1142 ** Documentation improvements
1143 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
1145 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
1146 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
1147 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
1148 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
1149 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
1150 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
1151 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
1153 * Major changes in release 4.2.4, 2004-11-08
1154 ** Functionality Changes
1155 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
1156 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
1158 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
1159 doesn't support that much).
1160 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
1161 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
1162 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
1163 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
1164 by the use of the -nowarn option.
1165 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
1166 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
1167 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
1168 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
1170 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
1171 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1172 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1173 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1174 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1175 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1176 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1177 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1178 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1179 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1180 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1182 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1183 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1184 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1185 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1186 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1188 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1190 * Major changes in release 4.2.3, 2004-10-30
1191 ** Functionality Changes
1192 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1193 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1194 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1195 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1196 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1197 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1198 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1199 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1200 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1201 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1202 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1203 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1204 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1205 directory we've just returned out of).
1207 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1209 * Major changes in release 4.2.2, 2004-10-24
1210 ** Documentation improvements
1211 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1213 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1214 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1215 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1217 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1218 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1220 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1221 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1222 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1223 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1225 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1227 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1228 requires it, as explained at
1229 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1231 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1233 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1234 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1235 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1236 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1237 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1239 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1241 * Major changes in release 4.2.0, 2003-06-14
1242 ** Functionality Changes
1243 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1244 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1245 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1246 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1247 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1248 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1249 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1250 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1251 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1252 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1253 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1254 find stats the file. There is also an option
1255 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1256 ** Documentation improvements
1257 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1258 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1259 The find manual page also now includes a section
1260 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1261 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1262 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1263 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1264 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1265 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1267 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1269 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1270 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1271 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1272 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1273 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1274 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1275 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1276 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1277 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1278 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1279 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1280 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1281 database if it fails.
1282 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1283 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1285 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1286 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1288 * Major changes in release 4.1.20, 2003-06-14:
1289 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1290 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1292 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1293 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1294 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1295 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1297 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1299 * Major changes in release 4.1.7, 2001-05-20:
1300 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1301 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1303 * Major changes in release 4.1.6, 2000-10-10:
1304 correct bug in prune.
1305 added --ignore-case option for locate
1307 * Major changes in release 4.1.5, 2000-04-12:
1308 Add support for large files
1310 * Major changes in release 4.1.4, 2000-02-26:
1311 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1313 * Major changes in release 4.1.3, 2000-01-27:
1314 added internationalization and localization.
1316 * Major changes in release 4.1.2, 2000-01-18:
1319 * Major changes in release 4.1.1, 1999-08-8:
1320 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1321 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1323 * Major changes in release 4.1, 1994-11-3:
1325 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1326 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1327 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1328 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1330 * Major changes in release 4.0, 1994-11-2:
1334 *** Man page for updatedb.
1335 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1338 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1339 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1340 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1341 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1342 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1343 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1346 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1347 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1348 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1349 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1350 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1351 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1353 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1356 *** Takes command-line options.
1359 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1360 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1361 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1363 * Major changes in release 3.8, 1993-03-29:
1365 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1366 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1367 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1369 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1371 ** locate can search multiple databases
1372 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1373 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1375 * No NEWS was kept for earlier releases. Known release dates include:
1376 ** release 3.2, 1991-08-28
1377 ** release 3.1, 1991-08-21
1378 ** release 3.0, 1991-08-21
1379 ** release 2.2, 1991-04-05
1380 ** release 2.1, 1991-01-01
1381 ** release 2.0, 1990-11-20
1382 ** release 1.2, 1990-07-03
1383 ** release 1.1, 1990-06-24
1384 ** release 1.0, 1990-06-22
1385 ** beginning of findutils history, 1987-02-21
1388 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1390 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1391 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1392 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1393 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1394 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf