1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.9-CVS
6 Findutils version 4.3.9 is released under version 3 of the GNU General
11 #20834: Avoid segmentation violation for -execdir when $PATH is
12 unset. Assume that the PATH is safe in this situation.
14 #20310: configure uses hosts's support status for "sort -z" when
15 generating the updatedb script for use on the target. This is
16 inappropriate when cross-compiling, so avoid doing that.
18 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
19 ordering comparison of function pointers.
21 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
22 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
24 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
25 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
26 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
27 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise. Likewise for find
28 (for example, with the -ok action).
30 #20547: The version information printed by find, xargs, locate,
31 updatedb, frcode and code now complies with the GNU Project's coding
34 #20662: Avoid memory leak in find -name and other places affected by
35 gnulib dirname module. The leak had been present since 4.3.1.
37 #20751: Avoid memory corruption in find -ls that has been present
40 #20871: Assertion failure introduced in 4.3.3, when oldfind is invoked
41 in a directory where the parent directory lacks search permission.
45 #20594: Allow fine-tuning of the default argument size used by xargs
46 and find at ./configure time.
48 #20688: The warning printed by -name or -iname when the pattern to
49 match contains a slash can now be silenced by -nowarn. This warning
50 was originally introduced unconditionally in 4.2.21.
52 Translation of locate --limit problems is improved.
54 POSIX will standardise -path, so the documentation no longer claims
55 that -wholename is the 'canonical' test, and -ipath no longer
58 ** Documentation Fixes
60 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
61 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
64 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
65 recent findutils release first.
67 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
69 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
71 The locate command's manual page now has a HISTORY section.
73 #20552: Fixed typos, formatting and section ordering issues in the
76 #20529: removed spurious 'o' in description of "xargs -a" in
79 #20865: Better documentation on the fact that -delete implies -depth
80 and that -delete interacts badly with -prune.
84 Updated Dutch translation.
87 * Major changes in release 4.3.8, 2007-06-12
91 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
92 a buffer overrun, but at this time no exploit mechanism is known.
94 * Major changes in release 4.3.7, 2007-06-09
98 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
99 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
100 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
101 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
102 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
107 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
108 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
109 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
110 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
111 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
112 has potential security implications.
114 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
116 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
117 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
119 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
123 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
125 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
127 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
130 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
131 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
133 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
134 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
135 system does not provide it.
137 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
139 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
141 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
142 some non-GCC compilers
144 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
146 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
148 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
150 #19871: Typos in find.1
152 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
153 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
155 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
157 * Major changes in release 4.3.6, 2007-05-21
161 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
164 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
165 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
166 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
167 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
168 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
169 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
171 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
172 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
174 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
175 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
176 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
181 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
184 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
187 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
188 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
189 replacement for stdbool.h.
191 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
192 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
194 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
195 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
196 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
198 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
202 * Major changes in release 4.3.5, 2007-05-05
204 ** Functional changes
206 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
207 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
210 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
211 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
215 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
216 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
218 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
219 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
222 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
225 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
226 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
227 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
229 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
230 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
233 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
234 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
235 generating an assertion failure.
237 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
239 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
241 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
242 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
245 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
246 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
247 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
248 report was not mentioned.
250 ** Documentation Fixes
252 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
253 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
255 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
256 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
258 * Major changes in release 4.3.4, 2007-04-21
262 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
264 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
266 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
267 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
269 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
270 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
273 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
274 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
276 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
277 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
280 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
281 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
283 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
286 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
288 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
289 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
294 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
297 * Major changes in release 4.3.3, 2007-04-15
299 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
303 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
304 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
306 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
309 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
310 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
312 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
314 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
315 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
316 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
319 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
321 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
323 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
324 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
325 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
327 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
328 (see "Functional changes" below)
330 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
333 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
334 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
335 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
336 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
337 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
342 ** Functional changes
344 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
345 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
347 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
348 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
349 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
350 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
351 this change in the 4.2.x series).
353 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
354 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
355 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
357 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
366 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
367 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
368 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
369 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
372 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
375 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
376 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
379 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
380 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
381 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
382 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
385 If you configure the sourec code and then run the tests with "make
386 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
390 * Major changes in release 4.3.2, 2006-11-25
394 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
395 more than one start point was given on the command line.
397 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
398 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
399 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
400 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
401 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
402 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
405 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
406 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
408 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
409 now generates an error message.
411 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
412 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
415 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
417 ** Functional changes
419 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
420 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
421 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
422 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
423 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
426 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
427 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
428 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
429 which is probably surprising for most users.
432 ** Documentation Fixes
434 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
435 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
438 * Major changes in release 4.3.1, 2006-08-06
442 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
443 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
444 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
445 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
447 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
448 which have missing expressions, such as
455 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
456 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
457 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
458 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
459 specified the wrong directory).
461 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
462 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
463 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
464 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
465 problem was worse for -exec.
467 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
468 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
470 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
471 Savannah bug #16269).
473 ** Functional changes
475 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
476 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
477 about find's internal state and progress.
479 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
480 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
482 ** Performance Enhancements
484 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
485 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
486 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
487 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
488 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
489 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
490 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
491 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
492 and compare the optimised query with:
493 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
495 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
497 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
498 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
499 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
504 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
506 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
507 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
508 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
509 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
510 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
511 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
513 * Major changes in release 4.3.0, 2005-12-12
515 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
516 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
517 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
518 may change or go away.
520 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
521 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
523 ** Functional Changes
525 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
526 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
527 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
529 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
530 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
532 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
533 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
536 default configuration find oldfind
537 configure --with-fts find oldfind
538 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
540 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
541 can be read, written or executed respectively.
543 * Major changes in release 4.2.27, 2005-12-06
545 ** Warnings of Future Changes
547 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
548 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
549 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
550 message is given if you do this.
554 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
555 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
556 from the operating system.
558 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
559 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
560 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
562 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
563 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
564 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
566 ** Documentation Changes
568 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
569 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
572 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
573 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
575 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
576 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
579 * Major changes in release 4.2.26, 2005-11-19
581 ** Public Service Announcements
583 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
584 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
585 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
586 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
588 ** Functional Changes
590 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
591 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
592 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
594 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
595 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
596 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
597 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
600 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
601 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
602 option, which changes other semantics too).
606 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
607 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
609 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
610 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
611 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
612 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
613 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
614 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
615 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
616 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
617 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
618 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
620 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
621 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
622 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
623 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
624 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
625 containing 35396 entries.
627 ** Documentation Changes
629 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
630 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
632 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
633 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
635 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
638 * Major changes in release 4.2.25, 2005-09-03
642 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
643 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
644 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
646 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
647 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
648 of upper/lower case distinctions.
650 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
653 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
654 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
655 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
659 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
661 * Major changes in release 4.2.24, 2005-07-29
663 ** Documentation Changes
665 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
666 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
667 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
669 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
672 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
673 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
674 the command's standard input from stdin.
676 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
677 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
679 ** Functional Changes
681 *** Functional changes in locate
683 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
684 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
685 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
686 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
687 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
688 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
689 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
692 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
693 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
694 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
697 *** Functional changes in find
699 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
700 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
701 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
702 recommended practice however).
704 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
705 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
708 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
709 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
710 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
711 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
712 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
713 HSFS implementation).
717 *** Bug Fixes for find
719 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
720 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
721 gnulib version of this function).
723 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
726 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
727 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
729 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
730 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
731 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
732 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
733 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
734 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
735 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
737 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
738 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
739 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
741 * Major changes in release 4.2.23, 2005-06-19
743 ** Documentation Changes
745 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
748 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
750 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
752 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
753 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
754 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
755 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
758 * Major changes in release 4.2.22, 2005-06-12
762 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
763 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
764 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
765 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
766 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
767 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
768 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
772 None in this release.
774 ** Functional Changes to locate
776 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
777 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
778 later instances are ignored.
780 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
781 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
782 one or more patterns.
784 ** Documentation Changes
786 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
787 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
788 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
789 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
790 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
793 * Major changes in release 4.2.21, 2005-06-07
794 ** Functional Changes to find
796 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
797 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
798 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
799 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
801 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
802 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
803 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
804 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
805 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
806 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
809 ** Functional Changes to locate
811 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
812 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
813 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
814 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
815 different set of results).
817 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
818 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
821 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
823 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
824 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
826 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
827 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
829 * Major changes in release 4.2.20, 2005-03-17
830 ** Internationalization and Localization
831 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
834 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
835 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
837 * Major changes in release 4.2.19, 2005-03-07
840 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
841 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
842 (Savannah bug #12044).
844 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
845 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
846 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
849 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
850 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
852 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
853 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
854 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
855 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
856 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
858 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
860 ** Functionality Changes
861 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
862 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
863 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
865 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
867 ** Documentation enhancements
868 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
870 ** Internationalization and Localization
871 New Vietnamese message translation.
873 * Major changes in release 4.2.18, 2005-02-16
875 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
876 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
877 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
878 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
880 ** Documentation improvements
881 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
883 * Major changes in release 4.2.17, 2005-02-08
885 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
886 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
887 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
888 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
889 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
890 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
893 * Major changes in release 4.2.16, 2005-02-05
894 ** Functionality Changes
895 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
896 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
898 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
899 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
900 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
903 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
906 * Major changes in release 4.2.15, 2005-01-29
907 ** Functionality Changes
908 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
909 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
911 * Major changes in release 4.2.14, 2005-01-25
912 ** Functionality Changes
913 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
915 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
916 distributed tar file more than once.
917 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
918 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
919 ** Documentation improvements
920 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
922 * Major changes in release 4.2.13, 2005-01-23
923 ** Performance Enhancements
924 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
925 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
926 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
927 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
928 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
930 * Major changes in release 4.2.12, 2005-01-22
931 ** Functionality Changes
932 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
933 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
934 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
935 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
936 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
937 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
938 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
940 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
941 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
942 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
944 * Major changes in release 4.2.11, 2004-12-12
946 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
947 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
948 ** Functionality Changes
949 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
950 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
951 a more helpful error message.
952 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
953 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
954 statistics about the locate databases.
955 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
956 ** Documentation improvements
957 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
958 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
960 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
963 * Major changes in release 4.2.10, 2004-12-06
965 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
966 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
969 * Major changes in release 4.2.9, 2004-12-05
970 ** Functionality Changes
971 *** 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_".
972 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
973 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
976 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
977 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
978 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
980 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
981 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
982 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
983 ** Documentation improvements
984 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
985 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
987 * Major changes in release 4.2.8, 2004-11-24
988 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
989 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
992 * Major changes in release 4.2.7, 2004-11-21
993 ** Functionality Changes
994 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
995 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
996 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
997 ** Documentation improvements
998 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
999 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
1000 are not are explained in this chapter.
1002 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
1004 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
1006 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
1007 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
1009 * Major changes in release 4.2.6, 2004-11-21
1011 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
1012 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
1013 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
1014 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
1017 * Major changes in release 4.2.5, 2004-11-11
1018 ** Functionality Changes
1019 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
1020 find will follow symbolic links.
1021 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
1023 ** Documentation improvements
1024 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
1026 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
1027 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
1028 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
1029 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
1030 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
1031 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
1032 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
1034 * Major changes in release 4.2.4, 2004-11-08
1035 ** Functionality Changes
1036 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
1037 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
1039 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
1040 doesn't support that much).
1041 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
1042 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
1043 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
1044 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
1045 by the use of the -nowarn option.
1046 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
1047 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
1048 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
1049 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
1051 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
1052 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1053 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1054 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1055 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1056 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1057 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1058 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1059 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1060 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1061 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1063 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1064 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1065 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1066 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1067 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1069 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1071 * Major changes in release 4.2.3, 2004-10-30
1072 ** Functionality Changes
1073 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1074 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1075 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1076 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1077 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1078 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1079 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1080 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1081 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1082 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1083 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1084 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1085 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1086 directory we've just returned out of).
1088 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1090 * Major changes in release 4.2.2, 2004-10-24
1091 ** Documentation improvements
1092 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1094 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1095 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1096 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1098 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1099 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1101 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1102 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1103 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1104 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1106 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1108 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1109 requires it, as explained at
1110 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1112 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1114 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1115 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1116 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1117 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1118 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1120 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1122 * Major changes in release 4.2.0, 2003-06-14
1123 ** Functionality Changes
1124 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1125 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1126 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1127 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1128 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1129 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1130 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1131 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1132 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1133 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1134 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1135 find stats the file. There is also an option
1136 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1137 ** Documentation improvements
1138 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1139 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1140 The find manual page also now includes a section
1141 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1142 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1143 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1144 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1145 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1146 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1148 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1150 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1151 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1152 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1153 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1154 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1155 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1156 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1157 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1158 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1159 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1160 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1161 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1162 database if it fails.
1163 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1164 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1166 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1167 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1169 * Major changes in release 4.1.20, 2003-06-14:
1170 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1171 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1173 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1174 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1175 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1176 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1178 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1180 * Major changes in release 4.1.7, 2001-05-20:
1181 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1182 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1184 * Major changes in release 4.1.6, 2000-10-10:
1185 correct bug in prune.
1186 added --ignore-case option for locate
1188 * Major changes in release 4.1.5, 2000-04-12:
1189 Add support for large files
1191 * Major changes in release 4.1.4, 2000-02-26:
1192 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1194 * Major changes in release 4.1.3, 2000-01-27:
1195 added internationalization and localization.
1197 * Major changes in release 4.1.2, 2000-01-18:
1200 * Major changes in release 4.1.1, 1999-08-8:
1201 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1202 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1204 * Major changes in release 4.1, 1994-11-3:
1206 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1207 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1208 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1209 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1211 * Major changes in release 4.0, 1994-11-2:
1215 *** Man page for updatedb.
1216 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1219 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1220 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1221 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1222 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1223 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1224 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1227 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1228 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1229 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1230 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1231 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1232 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1234 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1237 *** Takes command-line options.
1240 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1241 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1242 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1244 * Major changes in release 3.8, 1993-03-29:
1246 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1247 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1248 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1250 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1252 ** locate can search multiple databases
1253 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1254 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1256 * No NEWS was kept for earlier releases. Known release dates include:
1257 ** release 3.2, 1991-08-28
1258 ** release 3.1, 1991-08-21
1259 ** release 3.0, 1991-08-21
1260 ** release 2.2, 1991-04-05
1261 ** release 2.1, 1991-01-01
1262 ** release 2.0, 1990-11-20
1263 ** release 1.2, 1990-07-03
1264 ** release 1.1, 1990-06-24
1265 ** release 1.0, 1990-06-22
1266 ** beginning of findutils history, 1987-02-21
1269 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1271 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1272 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1273 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1274 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1275 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf