1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
3 * Major changes in release 4.3.14-CVS
7 #20873: Indicate that * matches / and leading dot in filenames for
10 * Major changes in release 4.3.13, 2008-02-14
14 #22057: Actually rename the old locate database to the new one
15 atomically, instead of just claiming the rename is atomic in a
18 #22056: -Xtime tests are off by one second (e.g. rm -f x; touch x;
19 find x -mtime 0 should print x).
21 #21960: xargs should collect the exit status of child processes even if
22 the total count of unreaped children has not yet reached the maximum
25 ** Documentation Fixes
27 Documented various useful techniques with invoking "sh -c" from
28 xargs in the Texinfo documentation.
32 Updated the German, Irish, Dutch, Polish and Vietnamese translations.
35 * Major changes in release 4.3.12, 2007-12-19
39 #15384: Find misbehaves when parent directory is not readable.
41 ** Documentation Fixes
43 More examples in the xargs manual page, including a portable analogue
48 Updated translations: Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Vietnamese.
51 * Major changes in release 4.3.11, 2007-12-02
55 When the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, "find -perm
56 +a+w" is rejected as invalid. Some other similar mode strings
57 starting with '+' which are not valid in POSIX are also rejected.
59 The -prune action now always evaluates as true (this is also a
65 #21568: Switch to checking the gnulib code out with native git, not
66 CVS. This affects mainly those who check findutils code out of CVS.
67 This is not the first time this bug has been fixed (the previous fix
68 used "cvs update -D", which git-cvspserver silently does not
71 #21039: Setting the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable now turns off
72 warnings by default, because POSIX requires that only diagnostic
73 messages (and -ok prompts) are printed on STDERR, and diagnostic
74 messages must also result in a nonzero exit status.
76 #20970: Trailing slash on directory arguments breaks -name. "find
77 foo/ -name foo" now correctly matches foo and printf foo/. See POSIX
78 interp http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/uploads/40/14959/AI-186.txt
80 #20865: Using both -delete and -prune without explicitly using -depth
81 is now an error. Traditionally, -delete has always turned -depth on
82 anyway, so this is not a functional change. However, using -depth
83 (implicitly or explicitly) makes -prune a no-op. This change is
84 intended to avoid nasty surprises for people who test with
85 "-print" and then change it to "-delete" when they are happy.
87 #20803: POSIX requires that -prune always returns true. Previously it
88 returned false when -depth was in effect and true otherwise.
90 #20802: If -delete fails, find's exit status will now be non-zero.
91 However, find still skips trying to delete ".".
93 ** Documentation Fixes
94 #21635: Some of the documentation files had missing copying
95 conditions. The missing files now have copying headers, and these
96 are compatible with each other (GNU FDL 1.2).
98 #21634: No copy of FDL 1.2 included with the source code
100 #21633: Missing copyright/license header in some documentation.
102 #21628: find -perm /000 matches all files rather than none, since
103 findutils-4.3.3. The Texinfo documentation is now consistent with the
104 manual page on this point.
106 #21270: Formatting fixes to the xargs.1 manual page, including making
107 options bold instead of italic and making OPTIONS a section header
108 rather than a subsection.
110 * Major changes in release 4.3.10, 2007-11-13
114 #21568: findutils gnulib code does not match the date in
115 import-gnulib.config. We now check out the gnulib code via
118 * Major changes in release 4.3.9, 2007-11-11
122 Findutils version 4.3.9 is released under version 3 of the GNU General
127 #20834: Avoid segmentation violation for -execdir when $PATH is
128 unset. Assume that the PATH is safe in this situation.
130 #20310: configure uses hosts's support status for "sort -z" when
131 generating the updatedb script for use on the target. This is
132 inappropriate when cross-compiling, so avoid doing that.
134 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
135 ordering comparison of function pointers.
137 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
138 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
140 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
141 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
142 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
143 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise. Likewise for find
144 (for example, with the -ok action).
146 #20547: The version information printed by find, xargs, locate,
147 updatedb, frcode and code now complies with the GNU Project's coding
150 #20662: Avoid memory leak in find -name and other places affected by
151 gnulib dirname module. The leak had been present since 4.3.1.
153 #20751: Avoid memory corruption in find -ls that has been present
156 #20871: Assertion failure introduced in 4.3.3, when oldfind is invoked
157 in a directory where the parent directory lacks search permission.
161 #20594: Allow fine-tuning of the default argument size used by xargs
162 and find at ./configure time.
164 #20688: The warning printed by -name or -iname when the pattern to
165 match contains a slash can now be silenced by -nowarn. This warning
166 was originally introduced unconditionally in 4.2.21.
168 Translation of locate --limit problems is improved.
170 POSIX will standardise -path, so the documentation no longer claims
171 that -wholename is the 'canonical' test, and -ipath no longer
174 ** Documentation Fixes
176 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
177 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
180 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
181 recent findutils release first.
183 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
185 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
187 The locate command's manual page now has a HISTORY section.
189 #20951: Very bad/unclear/confusing documentation of security checks in
192 #20865: Better documentation on the fact that -delete implies -depth
193 and that -delete interacts badly with -prune.
195 #20552: Fixed typos, formatting and section ordering issues in the
198 #20529: removed spurious 'o' in description of "xargs -a" in
201 #20232: The --max-database-age option of locate was added in release
202 4.3.3, but this file (NEWS) did not previously mention this fact.
206 Updated Dutch translation.
209 * Major changes in release 4.3.8, 2007-06-12
213 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
214 a buffer overrun, but at this time no exploit mechanism is known.
216 * Major changes in release 4.3.7, 2007-06-09
218 ** Functional changes
220 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
221 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
222 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
223 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
224 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
229 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
230 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
231 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
232 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
233 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
234 has potential security implications.
236 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
238 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
239 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
241 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
245 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
247 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
249 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
252 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
253 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
255 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
256 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
257 system does not provide it.
259 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
261 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
263 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
264 some non-GCC compilers
266 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
268 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
270 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
272 #19871: Typos in find.1
274 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
275 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
277 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
279 * Major changes in release 4.3.6, 2007-05-21
283 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
286 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
287 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
288 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
289 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
290 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
291 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
293 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
294 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
296 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
297 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
298 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
303 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
306 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
309 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
310 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
311 replacement for stdbool.h.
313 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
314 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
316 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
317 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
318 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
320 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
324 * Major changes in release 4.3.5, 2007-05-05
326 ** Functional changes
328 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
329 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
332 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
333 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
337 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
338 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
340 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
341 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
344 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
347 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
348 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
349 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
351 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
352 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
355 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
356 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
357 generating an assertion failure.
359 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
361 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
363 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
364 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
367 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
368 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
369 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
370 report was not mentioned.
372 ** Documentation Fixes
374 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
375 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
377 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
378 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
380 * Major changes in release 4.3.4, 2007-04-21
384 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
386 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
388 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
389 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
391 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
392 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
395 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
396 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
398 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
399 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
402 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
403 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
405 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
408 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
410 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
411 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
416 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
419 * Major changes in release 4.3.3, 2007-04-15
421 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
425 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
426 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
428 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
431 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
432 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
434 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
436 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
437 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
438 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
441 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
443 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
445 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
446 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
447 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
449 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
450 (see "Functional changes" below)
452 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
455 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
456 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
457 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
458 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
459 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
464 ** Functional changes
466 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
467 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
469 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
470 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
471 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
472 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
473 this change in the 4.2.x series).
475 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
476 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
477 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
479 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
488 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
489 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
490 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
491 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
494 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
497 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
498 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
501 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
502 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
503 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
504 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
507 If you configure the source code and then run the tests with "make
508 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
511 A new option, --max-database-age, has been added to locate.
514 * Major changes in release 4.3.2, 2006-11-25
518 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
519 more than one start point was given on the command line.
521 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
522 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
523 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
524 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
525 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
526 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
529 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
530 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
532 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
533 now generates an error message.
535 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
536 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
539 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
541 ** Functional changes
543 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
544 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
545 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
546 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
547 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
550 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
551 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
552 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
553 which is probably surprising for most users.
556 ** Documentation Fixes
558 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
559 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
562 * Major changes in release 4.3.1, 2006-08-06
566 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
567 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
568 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
569 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
571 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
572 which have missing expressions, such as
579 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
580 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
581 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
582 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
583 specified the wrong directory).
585 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
586 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
587 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
588 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
589 problem was worse for -exec.
591 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
592 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
594 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
595 Savannah bug #16269).
597 ** Functional changes
599 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
600 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
601 about find's internal state and progress.
603 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
604 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
606 ** Performance Enhancements
608 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
609 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
610 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
611 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
612 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
613 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
614 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
615 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
616 and compare the optimised query with:
617 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
619 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
621 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
622 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
623 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
628 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
630 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
631 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
632 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
633 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
634 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
635 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
637 * Major changes in release 4.3.0, 2005-12-12
639 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
640 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
641 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
642 may change or go away.
644 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
645 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
647 ** Functional Changes
649 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
650 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
651 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
653 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
654 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
656 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
657 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
660 default configuration find oldfind
661 configure --with-fts find oldfind
662 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
664 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
665 can be read, written or executed respectively.
667 * Major changes in release 4.2.27, 2005-12-06
669 ** Warnings of Future Changes
671 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
672 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
673 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
674 message is given if you do this.
678 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
679 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
680 from the operating system.
682 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
683 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
684 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
686 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
687 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
688 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
690 ** Documentation Changes
692 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
693 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
696 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
697 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
699 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
700 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
703 * Major changes in release 4.2.26, 2005-11-19
705 ** Public Service Announcements
707 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
708 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
709 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
710 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
712 ** Functional Changes
714 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
715 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
716 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
718 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
719 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
720 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
721 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
724 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
725 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
726 option, which changes other semantics too).
730 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
731 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
733 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
734 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
735 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
736 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
737 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
738 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
739 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
740 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
741 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
742 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
744 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
745 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
746 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
747 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
748 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
749 containing 35396 entries.
751 ** Documentation Changes
753 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
754 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
756 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
757 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
759 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
762 * Major changes in release 4.2.25, 2005-09-03
766 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
767 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
768 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
770 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
771 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
772 of upper/lower case distinctions.
774 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
777 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
778 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
779 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
783 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
785 * Major changes in release 4.2.24, 2005-07-29
787 ** Documentation Changes
789 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
790 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
791 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
793 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
796 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
797 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
798 the command's standard input from stdin.
800 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
801 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
803 ** Functional Changes
805 *** Functional changes in locate
807 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
808 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
809 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
810 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
811 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
812 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
813 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
816 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
817 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
818 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
821 *** Functional changes in find
823 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
824 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
825 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
826 recommended practice however).
828 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
829 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
832 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
833 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
834 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
835 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
836 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
837 HSFS implementation).
841 *** Bug Fixes for find
843 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
844 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
845 gnulib version of this function).
847 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
850 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
851 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
853 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
854 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
855 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
856 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
857 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
858 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
859 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
861 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
862 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
863 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
865 * Major changes in release 4.2.23, 2005-06-19
867 ** Documentation Changes
869 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
872 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
874 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
876 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
877 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
878 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
879 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
882 * Major changes in release 4.2.22, 2005-06-12
886 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
887 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
888 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
889 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
890 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
891 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
892 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
896 None in this release.
898 ** Functional Changes to locate
900 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
901 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
902 later instances are ignored.
904 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
905 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
906 one or more patterns.
908 ** Documentation Changes
910 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
911 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
912 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
913 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
914 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
917 * Major changes in release 4.2.21, 2005-06-07
918 ** Functional Changes to find
920 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
921 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
922 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
923 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
925 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
926 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
927 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
928 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
929 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
930 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
933 ** Functional Changes to locate
935 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
936 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
937 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
938 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
939 different set of results).
941 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
942 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
945 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
947 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
948 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
950 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
951 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
953 * Major changes in release 4.2.20, 2005-03-17
954 ** Internationalization and Localization
955 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
958 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
959 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
961 * Major changes in release 4.2.19, 2005-03-07
964 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
965 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
966 (Savannah bug #12044).
968 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
969 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
970 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
973 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
974 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
976 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
977 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
978 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
979 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
980 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
982 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
984 ** Functionality Changes
985 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
986 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
987 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
989 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
991 ** Documentation enhancements
992 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
994 ** Internationalization and Localization
995 New Vietnamese message translation.
997 * Major changes in release 4.2.18, 2005-02-16
999 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
1000 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
1001 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
1002 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
1004 ** Documentation improvements
1005 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
1007 * Major changes in release 4.2.17, 2005-02-08
1009 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
1010 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
1011 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
1012 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
1013 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
1014 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
1017 * Major changes in release 4.2.16, 2005-02-05
1018 ** Functionality Changes
1019 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
1020 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
1022 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
1023 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
1024 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
1027 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
1030 * Major changes in release 4.2.15, 2005-01-29
1031 ** Functionality Changes
1032 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
1033 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
1035 * Major changes in release 4.2.14, 2005-01-25
1036 ** Functionality Changes
1037 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
1039 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
1040 distributed tar file more than once.
1041 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
1042 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
1043 ** Documentation improvements
1044 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
1046 * Major changes in release 4.2.13, 2005-01-23
1047 ** Performance Enhancements
1048 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
1049 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
1050 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
1051 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
1052 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
1054 * Major changes in release 4.2.12, 2005-01-22
1055 ** Functionality Changes
1056 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
1057 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
1058 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
1059 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
1060 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
1061 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
1062 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
1064 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
1065 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
1066 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
1068 * Major changes in release 4.2.11, 2004-12-12
1070 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
1071 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
1072 ** Functionality Changes
1073 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
1074 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
1075 a more helpful error message.
1076 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
1077 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
1078 statistics about the locate databases.
1079 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
1080 ** Documentation improvements
1081 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
1082 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
1084 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
1087 * Major changes in release 4.2.10, 2004-12-06
1089 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
1090 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
1093 * Major changes in release 4.2.9, 2004-12-05
1094 ** Functionality Changes
1095 *** 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_".
1096 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
1097 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
1100 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
1101 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
1102 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
1104 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
1105 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
1106 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
1107 ** Documentation improvements
1108 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
1109 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
1111 * Major changes in release 4.2.8, 2004-11-24
1112 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
1113 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
1116 * Major changes in release 4.2.7, 2004-11-21
1117 ** Functionality Changes
1118 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
1119 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
1120 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
1121 ** Documentation improvements
1122 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
1123 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
1124 are not are explained in this chapter.
1126 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
1128 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
1130 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
1131 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
1133 * Major changes in release 4.2.6, 2004-11-21
1135 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
1136 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
1137 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
1138 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
1141 * Major changes in release 4.2.5, 2004-11-11
1142 ** Functionality Changes
1143 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
1144 find will follow symbolic links.
1145 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
1147 ** Documentation improvements
1148 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
1150 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
1151 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
1152 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
1153 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
1154 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
1155 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
1156 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
1158 * Major changes in release 4.2.4, 2004-11-08
1159 ** Functionality Changes
1160 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
1161 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
1163 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
1164 doesn't support that much).
1165 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
1166 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
1167 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
1168 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
1169 by the use of the -nowarn option.
1170 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
1171 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
1172 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
1173 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
1175 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
1176 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1177 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1178 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1179 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1180 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1181 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1182 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1183 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1184 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1185 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1187 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1188 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1189 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1190 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1191 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1193 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1195 * Major changes in release 4.2.3, 2004-10-30
1196 ** Functionality Changes
1197 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1198 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1199 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1200 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1201 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1202 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1203 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1204 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1205 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1206 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1207 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1208 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1209 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1210 directory we've just returned out of).
1212 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1214 * Major changes in release 4.2.2, 2004-10-24
1215 ** Documentation improvements
1216 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1218 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1219 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1220 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1222 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1223 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1225 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1226 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1227 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1228 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1230 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1232 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1233 requires it, as explained at
1234 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1236 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1238 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1239 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1240 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1241 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1242 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1244 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1246 * Major changes in release 4.2.0, 2003-06-14
1247 ** Functionality Changes
1248 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1249 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1250 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1251 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1252 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1253 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1254 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1255 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1256 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1257 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1258 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1259 find stats the file. There is also an option
1260 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1261 ** Documentation improvements
1262 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1263 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1264 The find manual page also now includes a section
1265 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1266 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1267 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1268 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1269 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1270 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1272 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1274 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1275 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1276 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1277 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1278 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1279 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1280 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1281 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1282 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1283 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1284 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1285 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1286 database if it fails.
1287 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1288 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1290 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1291 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1293 * Major changes in release 4.1.20, 2003-06-14:
1294 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1295 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1297 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1298 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1299 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1300 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1302 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1304 * Major changes in release 4.1.7, 2001-05-20:
1305 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1306 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1308 * Major changes in release 4.1.6, 2000-10-10:
1309 correct bug in prune.
1310 added --ignore-case option for locate
1312 * Major changes in release 4.1.5, 2000-04-12:
1313 Add support for large files
1315 * Major changes in release 4.1.4, 2000-02-26:
1316 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1318 * Major changes in release 4.1.3, 2000-01-27:
1319 added internationalization and localization.
1321 * Major changes in release 4.1.2, 2000-01-18:
1324 * Major changes in release 4.1.1, 1999-08-8:
1325 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1326 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1328 * Major changes in release 4.1, 1994-11-3:
1330 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1331 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1332 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1333 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1335 * Major changes in release 4.0, 1994-11-2:
1339 *** Man page for updatedb.
1340 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1343 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1344 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1345 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1346 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1347 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1348 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1351 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1352 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1353 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1354 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1355 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1356 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1358 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1361 *** Takes command-line options.
1364 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1365 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1366 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1368 * Major changes in release 3.8, 1993-03-29:
1370 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1371 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1372 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1374 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1376 ** locate can search multiple databases
1377 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1378 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1380 * No NEWS was kept for earlier releases. Known release dates include:
1381 ** release 3.2, 1991-08-28
1382 ** release 3.1, 1991-08-21
1383 ** release 3.0, 1991-08-21
1384 ** release 2.2, 1991-04-05
1385 ** release 2.1, 1991-01-01
1386 ** release 2.0, 1990-11-20
1387 ** release 1.2, 1990-07-03
1388 ** release 1.1, 1990-06-24
1389 ** release 1.0, 1990-06-22
1390 ** beginning of findutils history, 1987-02-21
1393 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1395 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1396 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1397 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1398 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1399 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf