1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.11-CVS
6 When the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, "find -perm
7 +a+w" is rejected as invalid. Some other similar mode strings
8 starting with '+' which are not valid in POSIX are also rejected.
10 The -prune action now always evaluates as true (this is also a
15 #21568: Switch to checking the gnulib code out with native git, not
16 CVS. This affects mainly those who check findutils code out of CVS.
17 This is not the first time this bug has been fixed (the previous fix
18 used "cvs update -D", which git-cvspserver silently does not
21 #21039: Setting the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable now turns off
22 warnings by default, because POSIX requires that only diagnostic
23 messages (and -ok prompts) are printed on STDERR, and diagnostic
24 messages must also result in a nonzero exit status.
26 #20970: Trailing slash on directory arguments breaks -name. "find
27 foo/ -name foo" now correctly matches foo and printf foo/. See POSIX
28 interp http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/uploads/40/14959/AI-186.txt
30 #20865: Using both -delete and -prune without explicitly using -depth
31 is now an error. Traditionally, -delete has always turned -depth on
32 anyway, so this is not a functional change. However, using -depth
33 (implicitly or explicitly) makes -prune a no-op. This change is
34 intended to avoid nasty surprises for people who test with
35 "-print" and then change it to "-delete" when they are happy.
37 #20803: POSIX requires that -prune always returns true. Previously it
38 returned false when -depth was in effect and true otherwise.
40 ** Documentation Fixes
41 #21635: Some of the documentation files had missing copying
42 conditions. The missing files now have copying headers, and these
43 are compatible with each other (GNU FDL 1.2).
45 #21270: Formatting fixes to the xargs.1 manual page, including making
46 options bold instead of italic and making OPTIONS a section header
47 rather than a subsection.
49 #21628: find -perm /000 matches all files rather than none, since
50 findutils-4.3.3. The Texinfo documentation is now consistent with the
51 manual page on this point.
53 * Major changes in release 4.3.10, 2007-11-13
57 #21568: findutils gnulib code does not match the date in
58 import-gnulib.config. We now check out the gnulib code via
61 * Major changes in release 4.3.9, 2007-11-11
65 Findutils version 4.3.9 is released under version 3 of the GNU General
70 #20834: Avoid segmentation violation for -execdir when $PATH is
71 unset. Assume that the PATH is safe in this situation.
73 #20310: configure uses hosts's support status for "sort -z" when
74 generating the updatedb script for use on the target. This is
75 inappropriate when cross-compiling, so avoid doing that.
77 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
78 ordering comparison of function pointers.
80 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
81 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
83 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
84 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
85 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
86 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise. Likewise for find
87 (for example, with the -ok action).
89 #20547: The version information printed by find, xargs, locate,
90 updatedb, frcode and code now complies with the GNU Project's coding
93 #20662: Avoid memory leak in find -name and other places affected by
94 gnulib dirname module. The leak had been present since 4.3.1.
96 #20751: Avoid memory corruption in find -ls that has been present
99 #20871: Assertion failure introduced in 4.3.3, when oldfind is invoked
100 in a directory where the parent directory lacks search permission.
104 #20594: Allow fine-tuning of the default argument size used by xargs
105 and find at ./configure time.
107 #20688: The warning printed by -name or -iname when the pattern to
108 match contains a slash can now be silenced by -nowarn. This warning
109 was originally introduced unconditionally in 4.2.21.
111 Translation of locate --limit problems is improved.
113 POSIX will standardise -path, so the documentation no longer claims
114 that -wholename is the 'canonical' test, and -ipath no longer
117 ** Documentation Fixes
119 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
120 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
123 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
124 recent findutils release first.
126 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
128 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
130 The locate command's manual page now has a HISTORY section.
132 #20951: Very bad/unclear/confusing documentation of security checks in
135 #20865: Better documentation on the fact that -delete implies -depth
136 and that -delete interacts badly with -prune.
138 #20552: Fixed typos, formatting and section ordering issues in the
141 #20529: removed spurious 'o' in description of "xargs -a" in
144 #20232: The --max-database-age option of locate was added in release
145 4.3.3, but this file (NEWS) did not previously mention this fact.
149 Updated Dutch translation.
152 * Major changes in release 4.3.8, 2007-06-12
156 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
157 a buffer overrun, but at this time no exploit mechanism is known.
159 * Major changes in release 4.3.7, 2007-06-09
161 ** Functional changes
163 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
164 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
165 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
166 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
167 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
172 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
173 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
174 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
175 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
176 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
177 has potential security implications.
179 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
181 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
182 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
184 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
188 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
190 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
192 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
195 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
196 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
198 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
199 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
200 system does not provide it.
202 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
204 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
206 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
207 some non-GCC compilers
209 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
211 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
213 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
215 #19871: Typos in find.1
217 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
218 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
220 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
222 * Major changes in release 4.3.6, 2007-05-21
226 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
229 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
230 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
231 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
232 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
233 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
234 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
236 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
237 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
239 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
240 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
241 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
246 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
249 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
252 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
253 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
254 replacement for stdbool.h.
256 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
257 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
259 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
260 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
261 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
263 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
267 * Major changes in release 4.3.5, 2007-05-05
269 ** Functional changes
271 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
272 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
275 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
276 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
280 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
281 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
283 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
284 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
287 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
290 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
291 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
292 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
294 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
295 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
298 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
299 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
300 generating an assertion failure.
302 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
304 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
306 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
307 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
310 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
311 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
312 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
313 report was not mentioned.
315 ** Documentation Fixes
317 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
318 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
320 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
321 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
323 * Major changes in release 4.3.4, 2007-04-21
327 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
329 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
331 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
332 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
334 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
335 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
338 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
339 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
341 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
342 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
345 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
346 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
348 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
351 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
353 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
354 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
359 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
362 * Major changes in release 4.3.3, 2007-04-15
364 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
368 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
369 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
371 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
374 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
375 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
377 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
379 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
380 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
381 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
384 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
386 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
388 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
389 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
390 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
392 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
393 (see "Functional changes" below)
395 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
398 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
399 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
400 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
401 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
402 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
407 ** Functional changes
409 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
410 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
412 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
413 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
414 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
415 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
416 this change in the 4.2.x series).
418 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
419 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
420 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
422 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
431 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
432 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
433 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
434 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
437 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
440 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
441 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
444 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
445 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
446 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
447 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
450 If you configure the source code and then run the tests with "make
451 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
454 A new option, --max-database-age, has been added to locate.
457 * Major changes in release 4.3.2, 2006-11-25
461 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
462 more than one start point was given on the command line.
464 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
465 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
466 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
467 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
468 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
469 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
472 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
473 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
475 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
476 now generates an error message.
478 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
479 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
482 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
484 ** Functional changes
486 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
487 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
488 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
489 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
490 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
493 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
494 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
495 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
496 which is probably surprising for most users.
499 ** Documentation Fixes
501 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
502 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
505 * Major changes in release 4.3.1, 2006-08-06
509 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
510 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
511 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
512 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
514 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
515 which have missing expressions, such as
522 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
523 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
524 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
525 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
526 specified the wrong directory).
528 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
529 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
530 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
531 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
532 problem was worse for -exec.
534 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
535 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
537 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
538 Savannah bug #16269).
540 ** Functional changes
542 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
543 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
544 about find's internal state and progress.
546 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
547 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
549 ** Performance Enhancements
551 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
552 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
553 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
554 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
555 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
556 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
557 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
558 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
559 and compare the optimised query with:
560 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
562 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
564 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
565 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
566 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
571 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
573 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
574 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
575 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
576 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
577 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
578 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
580 * Major changes in release 4.3.0, 2005-12-12
582 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
583 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
584 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
585 may change or go away.
587 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
588 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
590 ** Functional Changes
592 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
593 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
594 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
596 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
597 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
599 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
600 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
603 default configuration find oldfind
604 configure --with-fts find oldfind
605 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
607 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
608 can be read, written or executed respectively.
610 * Major changes in release 4.2.27, 2005-12-06
612 ** Warnings of Future Changes
614 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
615 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
616 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
617 message is given if you do this.
621 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
622 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
623 from the operating system.
625 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
626 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
627 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
629 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
630 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
631 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
633 ** Documentation Changes
635 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
636 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
639 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
640 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
642 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
643 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
646 * Major changes in release 4.2.26, 2005-11-19
648 ** Public Service Announcements
650 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
651 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
652 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
653 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
655 ** Functional Changes
657 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
658 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
659 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
661 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
662 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
663 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
664 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
667 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
668 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
669 option, which changes other semantics too).
673 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
674 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
676 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
677 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
678 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
679 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
680 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
681 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
682 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
683 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
684 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
685 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
687 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
688 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
689 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
690 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
691 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
692 containing 35396 entries.
694 ** Documentation Changes
696 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
697 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
699 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
700 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
702 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
705 * Major changes in release 4.2.25, 2005-09-03
709 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
710 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
711 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
713 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
714 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
715 of upper/lower case distinctions.
717 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
720 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
721 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
722 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
726 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
728 * Major changes in release 4.2.24, 2005-07-29
730 ** Documentation Changes
732 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
733 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
734 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
736 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
739 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
740 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
741 the command's standard input from stdin.
743 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
744 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
746 ** Functional Changes
748 *** Functional changes in locate
750 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
751 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
752 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
753 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
754 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
755 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
756 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
759 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
760 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
761 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
764 *** Functional changes in find
766 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
767 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
768 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
769 recommended practice however).
771 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
772 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
775 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
776 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
777 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
778 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
779 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
780 HSFS implementation).
784 *** Bug Fixes for find
786 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
787 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
788 gnulib version of this function).
790 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
793 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
794 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
796 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
797 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
798 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
799 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
800 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
801 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
802 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
804 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
805 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
806 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
808 * Major changes in release 4.2.23, 2005-06-19
810 ** Documentation Changes
812 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
815 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
817 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
819 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
820 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
821 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
822 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
825 * Major changes in release 4.2.22, 2005-06-12
829 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
830 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
831 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
832 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
833 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
834 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
835 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
839 None in this release.
841 ** Functional Changes to locate
843 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
844 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
845 later instances are ignored.
847 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
848 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
849 one or more patterns.
851 ** Documentation Changes
853 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
854 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
855 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
856 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
857 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
860 * Major changes in release 4.2.21, 2005-06-07
861 ** Functional Changes to find
863 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
864 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
865 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
866 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
868 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
869 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
870 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
871 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
872 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
873 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
876 ** Functional Changes to locate
878 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
879 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
880 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
881 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
882 different set of results).
884 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
885 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
888 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
890 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
891 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
893 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
894 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
896 * Major changes in release 4.2.20, 2005-03-17
897 ** Internationalization and Localization
898 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
901 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
902 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
904 * Major changes in release 4.2.19, 2005-03-07
907 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
908 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
909 (Savannah bug #12044).
911 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
912 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
913 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
916 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
917 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
919 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
920 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
921 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
922 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
923 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
925 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
927 ** Functionality Changes
928 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
929 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
930 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
932 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
934 ** Documentation enhancements
935 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
937 ** Internationalization and Localization
938 New Vietnamese message translation.
940 * Major changes in release 4.2.18, 2005-02-16
942 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
943 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
944 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
945 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
947 ** Documentation improvements
948 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
950 * Major changes in release 4.2.17, 2005-02-08
952 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
953 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
954 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
955 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
956 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
957 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
960 * Major changes in release 4.2.16, 2005-02-05
961 ** Functionality Changes
962 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
963 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
965 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
966 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
967 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
970 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
973 * Major changes in release 4.2.15, 2005-01-29
974 ** Functionality Changes
975 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
976 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
978 * Major changes in release 4.2.14, 2005-01-25
979 ** Functionality Changes
980 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
982 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
983 distributed tar file more than once.
984 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
985 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
986 ** Documentation improvements
987 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
989 * Major changes in release 4.2.13, 2005-01-23
990 ** Performance Enhancements
991 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
992 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
993 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
994 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
995 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
997 * Major changes in release 4.2.12, 2005-01-22
998 ** Functionality Changes
999 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
1000 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
1001 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
1002 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
1003 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
1004 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
1005 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
1007 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
1008 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
1009 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
1011 * Major changes in release 4.2.11, 2004-12-12
1013 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
1014 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
1015 ** Functionality Changes
1016 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
1017 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
1018 a more helpful error message.
1019 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
1020 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
1021 statistics about the locate databases.
1022 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
1023 ** Documentation improvements
1024 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
1025 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
1027 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
1030 * Major changes in release 4.2.10, 2004-12-06
1032 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
1033 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
1036 * Major changes in release 4.2.9, 2004-12-05
1037 ** Functionality Changes
1038 *** 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_".
1039 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
1040 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
1043 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
1044 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
1045 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
1047 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
1048 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
1049 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
1050 ** Documentation improvements
1051 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
1052 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
1054 * Major changes in release 4.2.8, 2004-11-24
1055 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
1056 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
1059 * Major changes in release 4.2.7, 2004-11-21
1060 ** Functionality Changes
1061 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
1062 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
1063 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
1064 ** Documentation improvements
1065 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
1066 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
1067 are not are explained in this chapter.
1069 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
1071 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
1073 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
1074 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
1076 * Major changes in release 4.2.6, 2004-11-21
1078 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
1079 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
1080 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
1081 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
1084 * Major changes in release 4.2.5, 2004-11-11
1085 ** Functionality Changes
1086 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
1087 find will follow symbolic links.
1088 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
1090 ** Documentation improvements
1091 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
1093 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
1094 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
1095 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
1096 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
1097 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
1098 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
1099 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
1101 * Major changes in release 4.2.4, 2004-11-08
1102 ** Functionality Changes
1103 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
1104 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
1106 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
1107 doesn't support that much).
1108 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
1109 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
1110 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
1111 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
1112 by the use of the -nowarn option.
1113 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
1114 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
1115 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
1116 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
1118 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
1119 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1120 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1121 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1122 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1123 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1124 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1125 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1126 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1127 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1128 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1130 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1131 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1132 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1133 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1134 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1136 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1138 * Major changes in release 4.2.3, 2004-10-30
1139 ** Functionality Changes
1140 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1141 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1142 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1143 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1144 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1145 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1146 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1147 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1148 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1149 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1150 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1151 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1152 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1153 directory we've just returned out of).
1155 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1157 * Major changes in release 4.2.2, 2004-10-24
1158 ** Documentation improvements
1159 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1161 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1162 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1163 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1165 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1166 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1168 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1169 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1170 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1171 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1173 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1175 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1176 requires it, as explained at
1177 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1179 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1181 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1182 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1183 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1184 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1185 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1187 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1189 * Major changes in release 4.2.0, 2003-06-14
1190 ** Functionality Changes
1191 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1192 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1193 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1194 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1195 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1196 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1197 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1198 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1199 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1200 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1201 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1202 find stats the file. There is also an option
1203 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1204 ** Documentation improvements
1205 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1206 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1207 The find manual page also now includes a section
1208 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1209 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1210 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1211 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1212 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1213 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1215 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1217 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1218 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1219 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1220 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1221 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1222 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1223 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1224 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1225 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1226 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1227 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1228 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1229 database if it fails.
1230 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1231 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1233 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1234 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1236 * Major changes in release 4.1.20, 2003-06-14:
1237 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1238 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1240 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1241 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1242 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1243 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1245 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1247 * Major changes in release 4.1.7, 2001-05-20:
1248 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1249 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1251 * Major changes in release 4.1.6, 2000-10-10:
1252 correct bug in prune.
1253 added --ignore-case option for locate
1255 * Major changes in release 4.1.5, 2000-04-12:
1256 Add support for large files
1258 * Major changes in release 4.1.4, 2000-02-26:
1259 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1261 * Major changes in release 4.1.3, 2000-01-27:
1262 added internationalization and localization.
1264 * Major changes in release 4.1.2, 2000-01-18:
1267 * Major changes in release 4.1.1, 1999-08-8:
1268 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1269 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1271 * Major changes in release 4.1, 1994-11-3:
1273 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1274 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1275 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1276 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1278 * Major changes in release 4.0, 1994-11-2:
1282 *** Man page for updatedb.
1283 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1286 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1287 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1288 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1289 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1290 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1291 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1294 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1295 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1296 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1297 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1298 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1299 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1301 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1304 *** Takes command-line options.
1307 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1308 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1309 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1311 * Major changes in release 3.8, 1993-03-29:
1313 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1314 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1315 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1317 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1319 ** locate can search multiple databases
1320 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1321 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1323 * No NEWS was kept for earlier releases. Known release dates include:
1324 ** release 3.2, 1991-08-28
1325 ** release 3.1, 1991-08-21
1326 ** release 3.0, 1991-08-21
1327 ** release 2.2, 1991-04-05
1328 ** release 2.1, 1991-01-01
1329 ** release 2.0, 1990-11-20
1330 ** release 1.2, 1990-07-03
1331 ** release 1.1, 1990-06-24
1332 ** release 1.0, 1990-06-22
1333 ** beginning of findutils history, 1987-02-21
1336 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1338 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1339 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1340 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1341 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1342 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf