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
10 #20310: configure uses hosts's support status for "sort -z" when
11 generating the updatedb script for use on the target. This is
12 inappropriate when cross-compiling, so avoid doing that.
14 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
15 ordering comparison of function pointers.
17 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
18 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
20 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
21 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
22 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
23 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise.
25 ** Documentation Fixes
27 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
28 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
31 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
32 recent findutils release first.
34 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
36 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
38 The locate command's manual page now has a HISTORY section.
40 * Major changes in release 4.3.8
44 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
45 a buffer overrun, but at this time no explot mechanism is known.
47 * Major changes in release 4.3.7
51 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
52 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
53 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
54 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
55 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
60 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
61 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
62 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
63 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
64 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
65 has potential security implications.
67 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
69 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
70 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
72 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
76 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
78 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
80 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
83 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
84 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
86 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
87 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
88 system does not provide it.
90 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
92 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
94 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
95 some non-GCC compilers
97 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
99 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
101 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
103 #19871: Typos in find.1
105 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
106 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
108 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
110 * Major changes in release 4.3.6
114 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
117 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
118 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
119 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
120 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
121 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
122 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
124 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
125 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
127 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
128 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
129 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
134 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
137 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
140 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
141 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
142 replacement for stdbool.h.
144 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
145 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
147 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
148 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
149 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
151 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
155 * Major changes in release 4.3.5
157 ** Functional changes
159 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
160 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
163 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
164 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
168 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
169 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
171 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
172 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
175 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
178 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
179 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
180 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
182 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
183 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
186 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
187 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
188 generating an assertion failure.
190 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
192 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
194 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
195 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
198 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
199 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
200 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
201 report was not mentioned.
203 ** Documentation Fixes
205 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
206 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
208 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
209 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
211 * Major changes in release 4.3.4
215 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
217 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
219 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
220 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
222 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
223 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
226 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
227 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
229 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
230 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
233 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
234 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
236 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
239 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
241 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
242 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
247 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
250 * Major changes in release 4.3.3
252 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
256 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
257 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
259 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
262 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
263 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
265 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
267 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
268 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
269 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
272 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
274 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
276 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
277 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
278 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
280 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
281 (see "Functional changes" below)
283 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
286 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
287 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
288 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
289 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
290 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
295 ** Functional changes
297 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
298 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
300 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
301 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
302 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
303 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
304 this change in the 4.2.x series).
306 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
307 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
308 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
310 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
319 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
320 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
321 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
322 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
325 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
328 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
329 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
332 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
333 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
334 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
335 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
338 If you configure the sourec code and then run the tests with "make
339 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
343 * Major changes in release 4.3.2
347 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
348 more than one start point was given on the command line.
350 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
351 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
352 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
353 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
354 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
355 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
358 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
359 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
361 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
362 now generates an error message.
364 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
365 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
368 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
370 ** Functional changes
372 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
373 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
374 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
375 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
376 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
379 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
380 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
381 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
382 which is probably surprising for most users.
385 ** Documentation Fixes
387 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
388 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
391 * Major changes in release 4.3.1
395 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
396 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
397 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
398 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
400 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
401 which have missing expressions, such as
408 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
409 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
410 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
411 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
412 specified the wrong directory).
414 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
415 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
416 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
417 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
418 problem was worse for -exec.
420 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
421 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
423 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
424 Savannah bug #16269).
426 ** Functional changes
428 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
429 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
430 about find's internal state and progress.
432 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
433 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
435 ** Performance Enhancements
437 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
438 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
439 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
440 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
441 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
442 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
443 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
444 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
445 and compare the optimised query with:
446 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
448 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
450 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
451 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
452 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
457 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
459 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
460 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
461 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
462 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
463 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
464 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
466 * Major changes in release 4.3.0
468 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
469 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
470 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
471 may change or go away.
473 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
474 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
476 ** Functional Changes
478 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
479 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
480 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
482 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
483 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
485 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
486 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
489 default configuration find oldfind
490 configure --with-fts find oldfind
491 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
493 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
494 can be read, written or executed respectively.
496 * Major changes in release 4.2.27
498 ** Warnings of Future Changes
500 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
501 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
502 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
503 message is given if you do this.
507 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
508 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
509 from the operating system.
511 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
512 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
513 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
515 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
516 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
517 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
519 ** Documentation Changes
521 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
522 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
525 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
526 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
528 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
529 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
532 * Major changes in release 4.2.26
534 ** Public Service Announcements
536 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
537 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
538 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
539 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
541 ** Functional Changes
543 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
544 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
545 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
547 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
548 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
549 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
550 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
553 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
554 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
555 option, which changes other semantics too).
559 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
560 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
562 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
563 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
564 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
565 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
566 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
567 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
568 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
569 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
570 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
571 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
573 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
574 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
575 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
576 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
577 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
578 containing 35396 entries.
580 ** Documentation Changes
582 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
583 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
585 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
586 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
588 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
591 * Major changes in release 4.2.25
595 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
596 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
597 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
599 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
600 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
601 of upper/lower case distinctions.
603 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
606 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
607 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
608 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
612 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
614 * Major changes in release 4.2.24
616 ** Documentation Changes
618 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
619 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
620 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
622 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
625 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
626 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
627 the command's standard input from stdin.
629 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
630 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
632 ** Functional Changes
634 *** Functional changes in locate
636 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
637 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
638 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
639 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
640 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
641 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
642 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
645 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
646 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
647 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
650 *** Functional changes in find
652 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
653 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
654 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
655 recommended practice however).
657 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
658 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
661 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
662 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
663 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
664 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
665 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
666 HSFS implementation).
670 *** Bug Fixes for find
672 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
673 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
674 gnulib version of this function).
676 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
679 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
680 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
682 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
683 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
684 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
685 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
686 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
687 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
688 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
690 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
691 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
692 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
694 * Major changes in release 4.2.23
696 ** Documentation Changes
698 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
701 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
703 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
705 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
706 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
707 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
708 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
711 * Major changes in release 4.2.22
715 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
716 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
717 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
718 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
719 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
720 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
721 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
725 None in this release.
727 ** Functional Changes to locate
729 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
730 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
731 later instances are ignored.
733 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
734 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
735 one or more patterns.
737 ** Documentation Changes
739 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
740 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
741 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
742 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
743 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
746 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
747 ** Functional Changes to find
749 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
750 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
751 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
752 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
754 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
755 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
756 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
757 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
758 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
759 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
762 ** Functional Changes to locate
764 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
765 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
766 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
767 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
768 different set of results).
770 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
771 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
774 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
776 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
777 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
779 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
780 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
782 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
783 ** Internationalization and Localization
784 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
787 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
788 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
790 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
793 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
794 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
795 (Savannah bug #12044).
797 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
798 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
799 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
802 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
803 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
805 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
806 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
807 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
808 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
809 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
811 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
813 ** Functionality Changes
814 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
815 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
816 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
818 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
820 ** Documentation enhancements
821 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
823 ** Internationalization and Localization
824 New Vietnamese message translation.
826 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
828 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
829 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
830 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
831 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
833 ** Documentation improvements
834 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
836 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
838 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
839 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
840 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
841 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
842 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
843 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
846 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
847 ** Functionality Changes
848 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
849 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
851 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
852 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
853 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
856 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
859 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
860 ** Functionality Changes
861 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
862 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
864 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
865 ** Functionality Changes
866 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
868 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
869 distributed tar file more than once.
870 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
871 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
872 ** Documentation improvements
873 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
875 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
876 ** Performance Enhancements
877 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
878 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
879 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
880 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
881 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
883 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
884 ** Functionality Changes
885 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
886 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
887 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
888 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
889 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
890 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
891 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
893 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
894 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
895 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
897 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
899 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
900 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
901 ** Functionality Changes
902 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
903 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
904 a more helpful error message.
905 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
906 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
907 statistics about the locate databases.
908 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
909 ** Documentation improvements
910 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
911 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
913 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
916 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
918 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
919 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
922 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
923 ** Functionality Changes
924 *** 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_".
925 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
926 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
929 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
930 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
931 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
933 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
934 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
935 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
936 ** Documentation improvements
937 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
938 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
940 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
941 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
942 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
945 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
946 ** Functionality Changes
947 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
948 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
949 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
950 ** Documentation improvements
951 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
952 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
953 are not are explained in this chapter.
955 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
957 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
959 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
960 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
962 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
964 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
965 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
966 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
967 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
970 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
971 ** Functionality Changes
972 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
973 find will follow symbolic links.
974 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
976 ** Documentation improvements
977 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
979 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
980 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
981 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
982 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
983 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
984 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
985 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
987 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
988 ** Functionality Changes
989 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
990 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
992 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
993 doesn't support that much).
994 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
995 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
996 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
997 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
998 by the use of the -nowarn option.
999 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
1000 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
1001 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
1002 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
1004 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
1005 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1006 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1007 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1008 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1009 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1010 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1011 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1012 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1013 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1014 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1016 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1017 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1018 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1019 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1020 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1022 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1024 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
1025 ** Functionality Changes
1026 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1027 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1028 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1029 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1030 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1031 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1032 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1033 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1034 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1035 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1036 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1037 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1038 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1039 directory we've just returned out of).
1041 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1043 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
1044 ** Documentation improvements
1045 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1047 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1048 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1049 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1051 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1052 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1054 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1055 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1056 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1057 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1059 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
1061 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1062 requires it, as explained at
1063 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1065 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
1067 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1068 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1069 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1070 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1071 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1073 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1075 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
1076 ** Functionality Changes
1077 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1078 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1079 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1080 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1081 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1082 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1083 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1084 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1085 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1086 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1087 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1088 find stats the file. There is also an option
1089 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1090 ** Documentation improvements
1091 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1092 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1093 The find manual page also now includes a section
1094 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1095 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1096 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1097 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1098 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1099 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1101 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1103 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1104 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1105 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1106 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1107 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1108 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1109 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1110 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1111 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1112 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1113 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1114 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1115 database if it fails.
1116 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1117 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1119 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1120 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1122 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
1123 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1124 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1126 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1127 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1128 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1129 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1131 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1133 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
1134 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1135 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1137 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
1138 correct bug in prune.
1139 added --ignore-case option for locate
1141 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
1142 Add support for large files
1144 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
1145 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1147 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
1148 added internationalization and localization.
1150 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
1151 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1152 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1154 * Major changes in release 4.1:
1156 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1157 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1158 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1159 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1161 * Major changes in release 4.0:
1165 *** Man page for updatedb.
1166 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1169 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1170 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1171 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1172 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1173 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1174 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1177 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1178 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1179 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1180 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1181 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1182 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1184 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1187 *** Takes command-line options.
1190 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1191 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1192 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1194 * Major changes in release 3.8:
1196 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1197 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1198 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1200 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1202 ** locate can search multiple databases
1203 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1204 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1207 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1209 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1210 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1211 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1212 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1213 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf