1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
3 * Major changes in release 4.3.12, 2007-12-19
7 #15384: Find misbehaves when parent directory is not readable.
11 More examples in the xargs manual page, including a portable analogue
16 Updated translations: Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Vietnamese.
19 * Major changes in release 4.3.11, 2007-12-02
23 When the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, "find -perm
24 +a+w" is rejected as invalid. Some other similar mode strings
25 starting with '+' which are not valid in POSIX are also rejected.
27 The -prune action now always evaluates as true (this is also a
33 #21568: Switch to checking the gnulib code out with native git, not
34 CVS. This affects mainly those who check findutils code out of CVS.
35 This is not the first time this bug has been fixed (the previous fix
36 used "cvs update -D", which git-cvspserver silently does not
39 #21039: Setting the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable now turns off
40 warnings by default, because POSIX requires that only diagnostic
41 messages (and -ok prompts) are printed on STDERR, and diagnostic
42 messages must also result in a nonzero exit status.
44 #20970: Trailing slash on directory arguments breaks -name. "find
45 foo/ -name foo" now correctly matches foo and printf foo/. See POSIX
46 interp http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/uploads/40/14959/AI-186.txt
48 #20865: Using both -delete and -prune without explicitly using -depth
49 is now an error. Traditionally, -delete has always turned -depth on
50 anyway, so this is not a functional change. However, using -depth
51 (implicitly or explicitly) makes -prune a no-op. This change is
52 intended to avoid nasty surprises for people who test with
53 "-print" and then change it to "-delete" when they are happy.
55 #20803: POSIX requires that -prune always returns true. Previously it
56 returned false when -depth was in effect and true otherwise.
58 #20802: If -delete fails, find's exit status will now be non-zero.
59 However, find still skips trying to delete ".".
61 ** Documentation Fixes
62 #21635: Some of the documentation files had missing copying
63 conditions. The missing files now have copying headers, and these
64 are compatible with each other (GNU FDL 1.2).
66 #21634: No copy of FDL 1.2 included with the source code
68 #21633: Missing copyright/license header in some documentation.
70 #21628: find -perm /000 matches all files rather than none, since
71 findutils-4.3.3. The Texinfo documentation is now consistent with the
72 manual page on this point.
74 #21270: Formatting fixes to the xargs.1 manual page, including making
75 options bold instead of italic and making OPTIONS a section header
76 rather than a subsection.
78 * Major changes in release 4.3.10, 2007-11-13
82 #21568: findutils gnulib code does not match the date in
83 import-gnulib.config. We now check out the gnulib code via
86 * Major changes in release 4.3.9, 2007-11-11
90 Findutils version 4.3.9 is released under version 3 of the GNU General
95 #20834: Avoid segmentation violation for -execdir when $PATH is
96 unset. Assume that the PATH is safe in this situation.
98 #20310: configure uses hosts's support status for "sort -z" when
99 generating the updatedb script for use on the target. This is
100 inappropriate when cross-compiling, so avoid doing that.
102 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
103 ordering comparison of function pointers.
105 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
106 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
108 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
109 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
110 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
111 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise. Likewise for find
112 (for example, with the -ok action).
114 #20547: The version information printed by find, xargs, locate,
115 updatedb, frcode and code now complies with the GNU Project's coding
118 #20662: Avoid memory leak in find -name and other places affected by
119 gnulib dirname module. The leak had been present since 4.3.1.
121 #20751: Avoid memory corruption in find -ls that has been present
124 #20871: Assertion failure introduced in 4.3.3, when oldfind is invoked
125 in a directory where the parent directory lacks search permission.
129 #20594: Allow fine-tuning of the default argument size used by xargs
130 and find at ./configure time.
132 #20688: The warning printed by -name or -iname when the pattern to
133 match contains a slash can now be silenced by -nowarn. This warning
134 was originally introduced unconditionally in 4.2.21.
136 Translation of locate --limit problems is improved.
138 POSIX will standardise -path, so the documentation no longer claims
139 that -wholename is the 'canonical' test, and -ipath no longer
142 ** Documentation Fixes
144 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
145 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
148 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
149 recent findutils release first.
151 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
153 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
155 The locate command's manual page now has a HISTORY section.
157 #20951: Very bad/unclear/confusing documentation of security checks in
160 #20865: Better documentation on the fact that -delete implies -depth
161 and that -delete interacts badly with -prune.
163 #20552: Fixed typos, formatting and section ordering issues in the
166 #20529: removed spurious 'o' in description of "xargs -a" in
169 #20232: The --max-database-age option of locate was added in release
170 4.3.3, but this file (NEWS) did not previously mention this fact.
174 Updated Dutch translation.
177 * Major changes in release 4.3.8, 2007-06-12
181 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
182 a buffer overrun, but at this time no exploit mechanism is known.
184 * Major changes in release 4.3.7, 2007-06-09
186 ** Functional changes
188 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
189 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
190 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
191 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
192 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
197 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
198 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
199 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
200 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
201 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
202 has potential security implications.
204 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
206 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
207 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
209 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
213 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
215 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
217 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
220 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
221 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
223 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
224 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
225 system does not provide it.
227 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
229 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
231 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
232 some non-GCC compilers
234 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
236 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
238 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
240 #19871: Typos in find.1
242 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
243 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
245 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
247 * Major changes in release 4.3.6, 2007-05-21
251 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
254 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
255 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
256 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
257 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
258 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
259 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
261 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
262 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
264 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
265 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
266 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
271 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
274 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
277 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
278 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
279 replacement for stdbool.h.
281 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
282 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
284 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
285 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
286 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
288 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
292 * Major changes in release 4.3.5, 2007-05-05
294 ** Functional changes
296 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
297 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
300 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
301 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
305 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
306 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
308 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
309 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
312 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
315 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
316 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
317 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
319 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
320 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
323 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
324 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
325 generating an assertion failure.
327 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
329 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
331 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
332 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
335 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
336 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
337 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
338 report was not mentioned.
340 ** Documentation Fixes
342 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
343 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
345 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
346 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
348 * Major changes in release 4.3.4, 2007-04-21
352 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
354 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
356 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
357 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
359 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
360 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
363 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
364 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
366 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
367 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
370 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
371 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
373 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
376 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
378 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
379 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
384 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
387 * Major changes in release 4.3.3, 2007-04-15
389 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
393 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
394 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
396 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
399 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
400 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
402 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
404 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
405 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
406 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
409 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
411 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
413 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
414 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
415 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
417 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
418 (see "Functional changes" below)
420 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
423 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
424 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
425 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
426 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
427 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
432 ** Functional changes
434 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
435 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
437 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
438 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
439 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
440 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
441 this change in the 4.2.x series).
443 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
444 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
445 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
447 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
456 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
457 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
458 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
459 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
462 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
465 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
466 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
469 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
470 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
471 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
472 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
475 If you configure the source code and then run the tests with "make
476 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
479 A new option, --max-database-age, has been added to locate.
482 * Major changes in release 4.3.2, 2006-11-25
486 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
487 more than one start point was given on the command line.
489 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
490 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
491 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
492 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
493 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
494 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
497 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
498 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
500 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
501 now generates an error message.
503 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
504 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
507 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
509 ** Functional changes
511 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
512 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
513 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
514 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
515 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
518 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
519 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
520 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
521 which is probably surprising for most users.
524 ** Documentation Fixes
526 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
527 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
530 * Major changes in release 4.3.1, 2006-08-06
534 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
535 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
536 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
537 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
539 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
540 which have missing expressions, such as
547 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
548 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
549 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
550 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
551 specified the wrong directory).
553 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
554 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
555 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
556 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
557 problem was worse for -exec.
559 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
560 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
562 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
563 Savannah bug #16269).
565 ** Functional changes
567 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
568 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
569 about find's internal state and progress.
571 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
572 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
574 ** Performance Enhancements
576 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
577 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
578 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
579 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
580 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
581 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
582 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
583 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
584 and compare the optimised query with:
585 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
587 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
589 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
590 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
591 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
596 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
598 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
599 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
600 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
601 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
602 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
603 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
605 * Major changes in release 4.3.0, 2005-12-12
607 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
608 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
609 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
610 may change or go away.
612 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
613 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
615 ** Functional Changes
617 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
618 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
619 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
621 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
622 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
624 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
625 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
628 default configuration find oldfind
629 configure --with-fts find oldfind
630 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
632 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
633 can be read, written or executed respectively.
635 * Major changes in release 4.2.27, 2005-12-06
637 ** Warnings of Future Changes
639 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
640 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
641 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
642 message is given if you do this.
646 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
647 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
648 from the operating system.
650 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
651 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
652 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
654 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
655 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
656 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
658 ** Documentation Changes
660 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
661 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
664 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
665 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
667 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
668 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
671 * Major changes in release 4.2.26, 2005-11-19
673 ** Public Service Announcements
675 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
676 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
677 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
678 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
680 ** Functional Changes
682 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
683 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
684 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
686 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
687 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
688 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
689 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
692 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
693 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
694 option, which changes other semantics too).
698 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
699 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
701 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
702 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
703 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
704 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
705 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
706 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
707 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
708 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
709 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
710 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
712 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
713 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
714 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
715 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
716 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
717 containing 35396 entries.
719 ** Documentation Changes
721 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
722 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
724 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
725 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
727 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
730 * Major changes in release 4.2.25, 2005-09-03
734 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
735 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
736 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
738 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
739 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
740 of upper/lower case distinctions.
742 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
745 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
746 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
747 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
751 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
753 * Major changes in release 4.2.24, 2005-07-29
755 ** Documentation Changes
757 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
758 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
759 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
761 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
764 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
765 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
766 the command's standard input from stdin.
768 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
769 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
771 ** Functional Changes
773 *** Functional changes in locate
775 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
776 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
777 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
778 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
779 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
780 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
781 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
784 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
785 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
786 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
789 *** Functional changes in find
791 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
792 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
793 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
794 recommended practice however).
796 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
797 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
800 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
801 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
802 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
803 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
804 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
805 HSFS implementation).
809 *** Bug Fixes for find
811 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
812 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
813 gnulib version of this function).
815 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
818 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
819 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
821 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
822 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
823 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
824 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
825 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
826 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
827 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
829 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
830 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
831 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
833 * Major changes in release 4.2.23, 2005-06-19
835 ** Documentation Changes
837 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
840 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
842 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
844 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
845 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
846 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
847 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
850 * Major changes in release 4.2.22, 2005-06-12
854 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
855 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
856 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
857 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
858 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
859 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
860 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
864 None in this release.
866 ** Functional Changes to locate
868 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
869 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
870 later instances are ignored.
872 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
873 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
874 one or more patterns.
876 ** Documentation Changes
878 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
879 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
880 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
881 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
882 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
885 * Major changes in release 4.2.21, 2005-06-07
886 ** Functional Changes to find
888 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
889 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
890 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
891 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
893 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
894 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
895 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
896 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
897 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
898 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
901 ** Functional Changes to locate
903 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
904 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
905 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
906 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
907 different set of results).
909 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
910 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
913 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
915 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
916 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
918 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
919 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
921 * Major changes in release 4.2.20, 2005-03-17
922 ** Internationalization and Localization
923 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
926 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
927 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
929 * Major changes in release 4.2.19, 2005-03-07
932 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
933 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
934 (Savannah bug #12044).
936 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
937 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
938 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
941 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
942 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
944 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
945 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
946 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
947 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
948 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
950 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
952 ** Functionality Changes
953 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
954 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
955 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
957 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
959 ** Documentation enhancements
960 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
962 ** Internationalization and Localization
963 New Vietnamese message translation.
965 * Major changes in release 4.2.18, 2005-02-16
967 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
968 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
969 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
970 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
972 ** Documentation improvements
973 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
975 * Major changes in release 4.2.17, 2005-02-08
977 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
978 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
979 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
980 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
981 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
982 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
985 * Major changes in release 4.2.16, 2005-02-05
986 ** Functionality Changes
987 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
988 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
990 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
991 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
992 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
995 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
998 * Major changes in release 4.2.15, 2005-01-29
999 ** Functionality Changes
1000 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
1001 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
1003 * Major changes in release 4.2.14, 2005-01-25
1004 ** Functionality Changes
1005 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
1007 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
1008 distributed tar file more than once.
1009 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
1010 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
1011 ** Documentation improvements
1012 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
1014 * Major changes in release 4.2.13, 2005-01-23
1015 ** Performance Enhancements
1016 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
1017 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
1018 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
1019 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
1020 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
1022 * Major changes in release 4.2.12, 2005-01-22
1023 ** Functionality Changes
1024 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
1025 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
1026 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
1027 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
1028 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
1029 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
1030 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
1032 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
1033 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
1034 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
1036 * Major changes in release 4.2.11, 2004-12-12
1038 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
1039 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
1040 ** Functionality Changes
1041 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
1042 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
1043 a more helpful error message.
1044 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
1045 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
1046 statistics about the locate databases.
1047 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
1048 ** Documentation improvements
1049 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
1050 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
1052 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
1055 * Major changes in release 4.2.10, 2004-12-06
1057 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
1058 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
1061 * Major changes in release 4.2.9, 2004-12-05
1062 ** Functionality Changes
1063 *** 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_".
1064 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
1065 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
1068 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
1069 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
1070 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
1072 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
1073 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
1074 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
1075 ** Documentation improvements
1076 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
1077 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
1079 * Major changes in release 4.2.8, 2004-11-24
1080 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
1081 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
1084 * Major changes in release 4.2.7, 2004-11-21
1085 ** Functionality Changes
1086 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
1087 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
1088 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
1089 ** Documentation improvements
1090 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
1091 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
1092 are not are explained in this chapter.
1094 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
1096 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
1098 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
1099 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
1101 * Major changes in release 4.2.6, 2004-11-21
1103 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
1104 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
1105 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
1106 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
1109 * Major changes in release 4.2.5, 2004-11-11
1110 ** Functionality Changes
1111 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
1112 find will follow symbolic links.
1113 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
1115 ** Documentation improvements
1116 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
1118 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
1119 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
1120 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
1121 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
1122 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
1123 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
1124 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
1126 * Major changes in release 4.2.4, 2004-11-08
1127 ** Functionality Changes
1128 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
1129 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
1131 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
1132 doesn't support that much).
1133 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
1134 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
1135 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
1136 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
1137 by the use of the -nowarn option.
1138 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
1139 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
1140 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
1141 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
1143 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
1144 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1145 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1146 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1147 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1148 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1149 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1150 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1151 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1152 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1153 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1155 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1156 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1157 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1158 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1159 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1161 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1163 * Major changes in release 4.2.3, 2004-10-30
1164 ** Functionality Changes
1165 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1166 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1167 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1168 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1169 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1170 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1171 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1172 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1173 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1174 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1175 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1176 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1177 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1178 directory we've just returned out of).
1180 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1182 * Major changes in release 4.2.2, 2004-10-24
1183 ** Documentation improvements
1184 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1186 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1187 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1188 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1190 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1191 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1193 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1194 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1195 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1196 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1198 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1200 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1201 requires it, as explained at
1202 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1204 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1206 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1207 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1208 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1209 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1210 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1212 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1214 * Major changes in release 4.2.0, 2003-06-14
1215 ** Functionality Changes
1216 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1217 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1218 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1219 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1220 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1221 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1222 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1223 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1224 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1225 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1226 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1227 find stats the file. There is also an option
1228 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1229 ** Documentation improvements
1230 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1231 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1232 The find manual page also now includes a section
1233 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1234 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1235 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1236 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1237 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1238 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1240 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1242 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1243 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1244 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1245 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1246 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1247 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1248 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1249 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1250 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1251 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1252 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1253 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1254 database if it fails.
1255 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1256 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1258 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1259 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1261 * Major changes in release 4.1.20, 2003-06-14:
1262 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1263 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1265 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1266 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1267 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1268 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1270 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1272 * Major changes in release 4.1.7, 2001-05-20:
1273 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1274 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1276 * Major changes in release 4.1.6, 2000-10-10:
1277 correct bug in prune.
1278 added --ignore-case option for locate
1280 * Major changes in release 4.1.5, 2000-04-12:
1281 Add support for large files
1283 * Major changes in release 4.1.4, 2000-02-26:
1284 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1286 * Major changes in release 4.1.3, 2000-01-27:
1287 added internationalization and localization.
1289 * Major changes in release 4.1.2, 2000-01-18:
1292 * Major changes in release 4.1.1, 1999-08-8:
1293 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1294 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1296 * Major changes in release 4.1, 1994-11-3:
1298 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1299 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1300 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1301 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1303 * Major changes in release 4.0, 1994-11-2:
1307 *** Man page for updatedb.
1308 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1311 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1312 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1313 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1314 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1315 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1316 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1319 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1320 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1321 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1322 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1323 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1324 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1326 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1329 *** Takes command-line options.
1332 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1333 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1334 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1336 * Major changes in release 3.8, 1993-03-29:
1338 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1339 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1340 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1342 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1344 ** locate can search multiple databases
1345 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1346 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1348 * No NEWS was kept for earlier releases. Known release dates include:
1349 ** release 3.2, 1991-08-28
1350 ** release 3.1, 1991-08-21
1351 ** release 3.0, 1991-08-21
1352 ** release 2.2, 1991-04-05
1353 ** release 2.1, 1991-01-01
1354 ** release 2.0, 1990-11-20
1355 ** release 1.2, 1990-07-03
1356 ** release 1.1, 1990-06-24
1357 ** release 1.0, 1990-06-22
1358 ** beginning of findutils history, 1987-02-21
1361 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1363 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1364 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1365 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1366 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1367 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf