1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.9-CVS
6 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
7 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
11 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
12 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
15 * Major changes in release 4.3.8
19 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
20 a buffer overrun, but at this time no explot mechanism is known.
22 * Major changes in release 4.3.7
26 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
27 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
28 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
29 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
30 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
35 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
36 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
37 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
38 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
39 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
40 has potential security implications.
42 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
44 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
45 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
47 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
51 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
53 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
55 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
58 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
59 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
61 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
62 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
63 system does not provide it.
65 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
67 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
69 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
70 some non-GCC compilers
72 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
74 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
76 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
78 #19871: Typos in find.1
80 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
81 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
83 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
85 * Major changes in release 4.3.6
89 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
92 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
93 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
94 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
95 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
96 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
97 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
99 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
100 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
102 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
103 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
104 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
109 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
112 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
115 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
116 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
117 replacement for stdbool.h.
119 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
120 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
122 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
123 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
124 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
126 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
130 * Major changes in release 4.3.5
132 ** Functional changes
134 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
135 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
138 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
139 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
143 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
144 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
146 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
147 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
150 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
153 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
154 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
155 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
157 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
158 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
161 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
162 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
163 generating an assertion failure.
165 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
167 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
169 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
170 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
173 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
174 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
175 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
176 report was not mentioned.
178 ** Documentation Fixes
180 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
181 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
183 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
184 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
186 * Major changes in release 4.3.4
190 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
192 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
194 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
195 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
197 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
198 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
201 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
202 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
204 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
205 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
208 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
209 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
211 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
214 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
216 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
217 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
222 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
225 * Major changes in release 4.3.3
227 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
231 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
232 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
234 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
237 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
238 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
240 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
242 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
243 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
244 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
247 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
249 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
251 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
252 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
253 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
255 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
256 (see "Functional changes" below)
258 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
261 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
262 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
263 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
264 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
265 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
270 ** Functional changes
272 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
273 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
275 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
276 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
277 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
278 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
279 this change in the 4.2.x series).
281 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
282 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
283 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
285 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
294 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
295 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
296 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
297 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
300 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
303 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
304 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
307 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
308 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
309 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
310 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
313 If you configure the sourec code and then run the tests with "make
314 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
318 * Major changes in release 4.3.2
322 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
323 more than one start point was given on the command line.
325 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
326 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
327 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
328 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
329 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
330 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
333 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
334 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
336 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
337 now generates an error message.
339 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
340 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
343 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
345 ** Functional changes
347 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
348 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
349 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
350 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
351 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
354 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
355 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
356 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
357 which is probably surprising for most users.
360 ** Documentation Fixes
362 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
363 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
366 * Major changes in release 4.3.1
370 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
371 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
372 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
373 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
375 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
376 which have missing expressions, such as
383 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
384 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
385 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
386 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
387 specified the wrong directory).
389 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
390 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
391 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
392 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
393 problem was worse for -exec.
395 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
396 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
398 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
399 Savannah bug #16269).
401 ** Functional changes
403 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
404 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
405 about find's internal state and progress.
407 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
408 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
410 ** Performance Enhancements
412 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
413 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
414 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
415 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
416 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
417 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
418 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
419 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
420 and compare the optimised query with:
421 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
423 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
425 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
426 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
427 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
432 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
434 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
435 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
436 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
437 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
438 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
439 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
441 * Major changes in release 4.3.0
443 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
444 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
445 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
446 may change or go away.
448 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
449 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
451 ** Functional Changes
453 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
454 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
455 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
457 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
458 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
460 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
461 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
464 default configuration find oldfind
465 configure --with-fts find oldfind
466 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
468 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
469 can be read, written or executed respectively.
471 * Major changes in release 4.2.27
473 ** Warnings of Future Changes
475 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
476 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
477 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
478 message is given if you do this.
482 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
483 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
484 from the operating system.
486 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
487 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
488 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
490 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
491 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
492 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
494 ** Documentation Changes
496 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
497 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
500 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
501 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
503 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
504 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
507 * Major changes in release 4.2.26
509 ** Public Service Announcements
511 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
512 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
513 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
514 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
516 ** Functional Changes
518 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
519 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
520 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
522 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
523 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
524 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
525 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
528 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
529 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
530 option, which changes other semantics too).
534 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
535 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
537 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
538 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
539 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
540 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
541 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
542 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
543 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
544 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
545 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
546 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
548 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
549 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
550 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
551 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
552 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
553 containing 35396 entries.
555 ** Documentation Changes
557 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
558 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
560 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
561 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
563 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
566 * Major changes in release 4.2.25
570 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
571 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
572 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
574 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
575 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
576 of upper/lower case distinctions.
578 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
581 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
582 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
583 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
587 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
589 * Major changes in release 4.2.24
591 ** Documentation Changes
593 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
594 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
595 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
597 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
600 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
601 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
602 the command's standard input from stdin.
604 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
605 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
607 ** Functional Changes
609 *** Functional changes in locate
611 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
612 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
613 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
614 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
615 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
616 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
617 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
620 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
621 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
622 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
625 *** Functional changes in find
627 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
628 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
629 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
630 recommended practice however).
632 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
633 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
636 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
637 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
638 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
639 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
640 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
641 HSFS implementation).
645 *** Bug Fixes for find
647 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
648 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
649 gnulib version of this function).
651 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
654 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
655 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
657 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
658 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
659 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
660 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
661 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
662 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
663 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
665 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
666 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
667 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
669 * Major changes in release 4.2.23
671 ** Documentation Changes
673 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
676 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
678 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
680 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
681 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
682 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
683 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
686 * Major changes in release 4.2.22
690 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
691 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
692 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
693 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
694 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
695 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
696 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
700 None in this release.
702 ** Functional Changes to locate
704 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
705 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
706 later instances are ignored.
708 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
709 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
710 one or more patterns.
712 ** Documentation Changes
714 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
715 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
716 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
717 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
718 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
721 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
722 ** Functional Changes to find
724 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
725 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
726 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
727 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
729 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
730 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
731 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
732 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
733 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
734 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
737 ** Functional Changes to locate
739 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
740 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
741 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
742 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
743 different set of results).
745 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
746 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
749 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
751 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
752 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
754 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
755 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
757 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
758 ** Internationalization and Localization
759 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
762 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
763 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
765 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
768 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
769 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
770 (Savannah bug #12044).
772 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
773 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
774 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
777 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
778 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
780 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
781 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
782 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
783 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
784 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
786 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
788 ** Functionality Changes
789 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
790 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
791 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
793 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
795 ** Documentation enhancements
796 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
798 ** Internationalization and Localization
799 New Vietnamese message translation.
801 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
803 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
804 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
805 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
806 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
808 ** Documentation improvements
809 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
811 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
813 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
814 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
815 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
816 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
817 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
818 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
821 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
822 ** Functionality Changes
823 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
824 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
826 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
827 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
828 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
831 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
834 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
835 ** Functionality Changes
836 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
837 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
839 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
840 ** Functionality Changes
841 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
843 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
844 distributed tar file more than once.
845 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
846 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
847 ** Documentation improvements
848 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
850 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
851 ** Performance Enhancements
852 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
853 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
854 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
855 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
856 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
858 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
859 ** Functionality Changes
860 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
861 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
862 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
863 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
864 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
865 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
866 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
868 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
869 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
870 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
872 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
874 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
875 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
876 ** Functionality Changes
877 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
878 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
879 a more helpful error message.
880 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
881 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
882 statistics about the locate databases.
883 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
884 ** Documentation improvements
885 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
886 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
888 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
891 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
893 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
894 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
897 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
898 ** Functionality Changes
899 *** 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_".
900 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
901 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
904 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
905 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
906 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
908 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
909 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
910 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
911 ** Documentation improvements
912 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
913 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
915 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
916 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
917 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
920 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
921 ** Functionality Changes
922 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
923 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
924 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
925 ** Documentation improvements
926 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
927 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
928 are not are explained in this chapter.
930 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
932 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
934 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
935 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
937 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
939 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
940 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
941 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
942 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
945 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
946 ** Functionality Changes
947 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
948 find will follow symbolic links.
949 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
951 ** Documentation improvements
952 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
954 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
955 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
956 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
957 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
958 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
959 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
960 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
962 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
963 ** Functionality Changes
964 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
965 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
967 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
968 doesn't support that much).
969 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
970 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
971 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
972 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
973 by the use of the -nowarn option.
974 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
975 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
976 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
977 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
979 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
980 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
981 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
982 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
983 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
984 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
985 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
986 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
987 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
988 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
989 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
991 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
992 systems that have non-writable string constants.
993 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
994 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
995 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
997 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
999 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
1000 ** Functionality Changes
1001 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1002 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1003 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1004 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1005 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1006 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1007 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1008 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1009 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1010 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1011 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1012 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1013 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1014 directory we've just returned out of).
1016 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1018 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
1019 ** Documentation improvements
1020 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1022 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1023 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1024 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1026 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1027 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1029 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1030 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1031 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1032 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1034 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
1036 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1037 requires it, as explained at
1038 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1040 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
1042 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1043 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1044 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1045 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1046 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1048 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1050 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
1051 ** Functionality Changes
1052 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1053 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1054 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1055 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1056 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1057 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1058 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1059 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1060 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1061 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1062 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1063 find stats the file. There is also an option
1064 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1065 ** Documentation improvements
1066 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1067 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1068 The find manual page also now includes a section
1069 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1070 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1071 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1072 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1073 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1074 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1076 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1078 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1079 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1080 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1081 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1082 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1083 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1084 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1085 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1086 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1087 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1088 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1089 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1090 database if it fails.
1091 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1092 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1094 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1095 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1097 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
1098 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1099 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1101 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1102 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1103 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1104 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1106 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1108 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
1109 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1110 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1112 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
1113 correct bug in prune.
1114 added --ignore-case option for locate
1116 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
1117 Add support for large files
1119 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
1120 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1122 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
1123 added internationalization and localization.
1125 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
1126 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1127 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1129 * Major changes in release 4.1:
1131 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1132 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1133 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1134 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1136 * Major changes in release 4.0:
1140 *** Man page for updatedb.
1141 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1144 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1145 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1146 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1147 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1148 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1149 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1152 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1153 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1154 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1155 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1156 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1157 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1159 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1162 *** Takes command-line options.
1165 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1166 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1167 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1169 * Major changes in release 3.8:
1171 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1172 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1173 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1175 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1177 ** locate can search multiple databases
1178 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1179 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1182 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1184 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1185 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1186 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1187 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1188 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf