1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.9-CVS
6 Findutils version 4.3.9 is released under version 3 of the GNU General
11 #20310: configure uses hosts's support status for "sort -z" when
12 generating the updatedb script for use on the target. This is
13 inappropriate when cross-compiling, so avoid doing that.
15 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
16 ordering comparison of function pointers.
18 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
19 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
21 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
22 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
23 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
24 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise.
26 #20547: The version information printed by find, xargs, locate,
27 updatedb, frcode and code now complies with the GNU Project's coding
32 #20594: Allow fine-tuning of the default argument size used by xargs
33 and find at ./configure time.
35 ** Documentation Fixes
37 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
38 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
41 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
42 recent findutils release first.
44 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
46 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
48 The locate command's manual page now has a HISTORY section.
50 #20552: Fixed typos, formatting and section ordering issues in the
53 #20529: removed spurious 'o' in description of "xargs -a" in
56 * Major changes in release 4.3.8, 2007-06-12
60 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
61 a buffer overrun, but at this time no exploit mechanism is known.
63 * Major changes in release 4.3.7, 2007-06-09
67 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
68 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
69 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
70 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
71 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
76 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
77 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
78 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
79 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
80 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
81 has potential security implications.
83 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
85 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
86 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
88 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
92 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
94 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
96 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
99 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
100 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
102 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
103 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
104 system does not provide it.
106 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
108 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
110 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
111 some non-GCC compilers
113 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
115 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
117 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
119 #19871: Typos in find.1
121 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
122 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
124 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
126 * Major changes in release 4.3.6, 2007-05-21
130 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
133 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
134 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
135 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
136 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
137 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
138 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
140 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
141 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
143 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
144 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
145 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
150 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
153 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
156 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
157 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
158 replacement for stdbool.h.
160 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
161 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
163 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
164 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
165 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
167 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
171 * Major changes in release 4.3.5, 2007-05-05
173 ** Functional changes
175 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
176 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
179 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
180 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
184 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
185 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
187 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
188 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
191 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
194 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
195 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
196 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
198 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
199 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
202 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
203 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
204 generating an assertion failure.
206 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
208 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
210 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
211 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
214 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
215 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
216 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
217 report was not mentioned.
219 ** Documentation Fixes
221 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
222 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
224 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
225 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
227 * Major changes in release 4.3.4, 2007-04-21
231 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
233 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
235 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
236 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
238 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
239 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
242 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
243 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
245 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
246 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
249 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
250 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
252 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
255 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
257 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
258 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
263 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
266 * Major changes in release 4.3.3, 2007-04-15
268 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
272 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
273 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
275 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
278 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
279 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
281 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
283 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
284 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
285 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
288 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
290 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
292 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
293 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
294 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
296 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
297 (see "Functional changes" below)
299 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
302 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
303 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
304 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
305 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
306 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
311 ** Functional changes
313 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
314 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
316 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
317 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
318 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
319 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
320 this change in the 4.2.x series).
322 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
323 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
324 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
326 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
335 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
336 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
337 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
338 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
341 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
344 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
345 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
348 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
349 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
350 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
351 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
354 If you configure the sourec code and then run the tests with "make
355 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
359 * Major changes in release 4.3.2, 2006-11-25
363 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
364 more than one start point was given on the command line.
366 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
367 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
368 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
369 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
370 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
371 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
374 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
375 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
377 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
378 now generates an error message.
380 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
381 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
384 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
386 ** Functional changes
388 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
389 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
390 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
391 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
392 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
395 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
396 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
397 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
398 which is probably surprising for most users.
401 ** Documentation Fixes
403 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
404 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
407 * Major changes in release 4.3.1, 2006-08-06
411 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
412 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
413 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
414 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
416 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
417 which have missing expressions, such as
424 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
425 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
426 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
427 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
428 specified the wrong directory).
430 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
431 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
432 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
433 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
434 problem was worse for -exec.
436 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
437 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
439 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
440 Savannah bug #16269).
442 ** Functional changes
444 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
445 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
446 about find's internal state and progress.
448 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
449 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
451 ** Performance Enhancements
453 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
454 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
455 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
456 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
457 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
458 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
459 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
460 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
461 and compare the optimised query with:
462 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
464 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
466 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
467 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
468 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
473 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
475 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
476 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
477 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
478 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
479 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
480 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
482 * Major changes in release 4.3.0, 2005-12-12
484 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
485 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
486 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
487 may change or go away.
489 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
490 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
492 ** Functional Changes
494 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
495 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
496 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
498 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
499 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
501 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
502 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
505 default configuration find oldfind
506 configure --with-fts find oldfind
507 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
509 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
510 can be read, written or executed respectively.
512 * Major changes in release 4.2.27, 2005-12-06
514 ** Warnings of Future Changes
516 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
517 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
518 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
519 message is given if you do this.
523 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
524 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
525 from the operating system.
527 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
528 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
529 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
531 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
532 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
533 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
535 ** Documentation Changes
537 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
538 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
541 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
542 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
544 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
545 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
548 * Major changes in release 4.2.26, 2005-11-19
550 ** Public Service Announcements
552 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
553 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
554 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
555 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
557 ** Functional Changes
559 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
560 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
561 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
563 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
564 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
565 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
566 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
569 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
570 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
571 option, which changes other semantics too).
575 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
576 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
578 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
579 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
580 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
581 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
582 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
583 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
584 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
585 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
586 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
587 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
589 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
590 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
591 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
592 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
593 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
594 containing 35396 entries.
596 ** Documentation Changes
598 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
599 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
601 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
602 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
604 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
607 * Major changes in release 4.2.25, 2005-09-03
611 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
612 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
613 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
615 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
616 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
617 of upper/lower case distinctions.
619 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
622 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
623 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
624 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
628 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
630 * Major changes in release 4.2.24, 2005-07-29
632 ** Documentation Changes
634 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
635 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
636 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
638 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
641 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
642 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
643 the command's standard input from stdin.
645 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
646 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
648 ** Functional Changes
650 *** Functional changes in locate
652 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
653 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
654 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
655 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
656 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
657 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
658 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
661 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
662 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
663 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
666 *** Functional changes in find
668 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
669 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
670 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
671 recommended practice however).
673 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
674 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
677 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
678 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
679 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
680 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
681 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
682 HSFS implementation).
686 *** Bug Fixes for find
688 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
689 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
690 gnulib version of this function).
692 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
695 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
696 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
698 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
699 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
700 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
701 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
702 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
703 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
704 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
706 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
707 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
708 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
710 * Major changes in release 4.2.23, 2005-06-19
712 ** Documentation Changes
714 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
717 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
719 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
721 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
722 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
723 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
724 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
727 * Major changes in release 4.2.22, 2005-06-12
731 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
732 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
733 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
734 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
735 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
736 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
737 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
741 None in this release.
743 ** Functional Changes to locate
745 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
746 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
747 later instances are ignored.
749 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
750 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
751 one or more patterns.
753 ** Documentation Changes
755 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
756 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
757 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
758 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
759 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
762 * Major changes in release 4.2.21, 2005-06-07
763 ** Functional Changes to find
765 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
766 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
767 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
768 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
770 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
771 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
772 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
773 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
774 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
775 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
778 ** Functional Changes to locate
780 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
781 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
782 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
783 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
784 different set of results).
786 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
787 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
790 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
792 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
793 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
795 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
796 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
798 * Major changes in release 4.2.20, 2005-03-17
799 ** Internationalization and Localization
800 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
803 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
804 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
806 * Major changes in release 4.2.19, 2005-03-07
809 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
810 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
811 (Savannah bug #12044).
813 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
814 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
815 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
818 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
819 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
821 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
822 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
823 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
824 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
825 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
827 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
829 ** Functionality Changes
830 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
831 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
832 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
834 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
836 ** Documentation enhancements
837 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
839 ** Internationalization and Localization
840 New Vietnamese message translation.
842 * Major changes in release 4.2.18, 2005-02-16
844 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
845 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
846 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
847 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
849 ** Documentation improvements
850 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
852 * Major changes in release 4.2.17, 2005-02-08
854 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
855 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
856 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
857 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
858 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
859 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
862 * Major changes in release 4.2.16, 2005-02-05
863 ** Functionality Changes
864 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
865 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
867 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
868 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
869 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
872 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
875 * Major changes in release 4.2.15, 2005-01-29
876 ** Functionality Changes
877 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
878 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
880 * Major changes in release 4.2.14, 2005-01-25
881 ** Functionality Changes
882 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
884 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
885 distributed tar file more than once.
886 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
887 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
888 ** Documentation improvements
889 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
891 * Major changes in release 4.2.13, 2005-01-23
892 ** Performance Enhancements
893 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
894 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
895 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
896 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
897 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
899 * Major changes in release 4.2.12, 2005-01-22
900 ** Functionality Changes
901 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
902 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
903 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
904 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
905 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
906 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
907 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
909 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
910 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
911 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
913 * Major changes in release 4.2.11, 2004-12-12
915 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
916 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
917 ** Functionality Changes
918 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
919 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
920 a more helpful error message.
921 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
922 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
923 statistics about the locate databases.
924 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
925 ** Documentation improvements
926 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
927 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
929 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
932 * Major changes in release 4.2.10, 2004-12-06
934 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
935 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
938 * Major changes in release 4.2.9, 2004-12-05
939 ** Functionality Changes
940 *** 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_".
941 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
942 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
945 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
946 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
947 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
949 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
950 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
951 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
952 ** Documentation improvements
953 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
954 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
956 * Major changes in release 4.2.8, 2004-11-24
957 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
958 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
961 * Major changes in release 4.2.7, 2004-11-21
962 ** Functionality Changes
963 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
964 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
965 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
966 ** Documentation improvements
967 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
968 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
969 are not are explained in this chapter.
971 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
973 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
975 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
976 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
978 * Major changes in release 4.2.6, 2004-11-21
980 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
981 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
982 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
983 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
986 * Major changes in release 4.2.5, 2004-11-11
987 ** Functionality Changes
988 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
989 find will follow symbolic links.
990 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
992 ** Documentation improvements
993 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
995 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
996 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
997 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
998 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
999 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
1000 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
1001 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
1003 * Major changes in release 4.2.4, 2004-11-08
1004 ** Functionality Changes
1005 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
1006 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
1008 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
1009 doesn't support that much).
1010 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
1011 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
1012 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
1013 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
1014 by the use of the -nowarn option.
1015 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
1016 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
1017 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
1018 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
1020 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
1021 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1022 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1023 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1024 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1025 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1026 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1027 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1028 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1029 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1030 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1032 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1033 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1034 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1035 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1036 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1038 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1040 * Major changes in release 4.2.3, 2004-10-30
1041 ** Functionality Changes
1042 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1043 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1044 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1045 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1046 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1047 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1048 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1049 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1050 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1051 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1052 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1053 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1054 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1055 directory we've just returned out of).
1057 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1059 * Major changes in release 4.2.2, 2004-10-24
1060 ** Documentation improvements
1061 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1063 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1064 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1065 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1067 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1068 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1070 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1071 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1072 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1073 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1075 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1077 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1078 requires it, as explained at
1079 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1081 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1083 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1084 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1085 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1086 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1087 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1089 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1091 * Major changes in release 4.2.0, 2003-06-14
1092 ** Functionality Changes
1093 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1094 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1095 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1096 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1097 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1098 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1099 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1100 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1101 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1102 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1103 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1104 find stats the file. There is also an option
1105 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1106 ** Documentation improvements
1107 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1108 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1109 The find manual page also now includes a section
1110 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1111 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1112 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1113 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1114 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1115 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1117 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1119 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1120 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1121 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1122 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1123 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1124 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1125 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1126 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1127 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1128 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1129 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1130 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1131 database if it fails.
1132 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1133 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1135 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1136 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1138 * Major changes in release 4.1.20, 2003-06-14:
1139 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1140 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1142 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1143 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1144 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1145 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1147 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1149 * Major changes in release 4.1.7, 2001-05-20:
1150 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1151 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1153 * Major changes in release 4.1.6, 2000-10-10:
1154 correct bug in prune.
1155 added --ignore-case option for locate
1157 * Major changes in release 4.1.5, 2000-04-12:
1158 Add support for large files
1160 * Major changes in release 4.1.4, 2000-02-26:
1161 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1163 * Major changes in release 4.1.3, 2000-01-27:
1164 added internationalization and localization.
1166 * Major changes in release 4.1.2, 2000-01-18:
1169 * Major changes in release 4.1.1, 1999-08-8:
1170 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1171 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1173 * Major changes in release 4.1, 1994-11-3:
1175 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1176 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1177 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1178 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1180 * Major changes in release 4.0, 1994-11-2:
1184 *** Man page for updatedb.
1185 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1188 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1189 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1190 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1191 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1192 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1193 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1196 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1197 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1198 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1199 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1200 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1201 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1203 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1206 *** Takes command-line options.
1209 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1210 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1211 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1213 * Major changes in release 3.8, 1993-03-29:
1215 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1216 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1217 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1219 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1221 ** locate can search multiple databases
1222 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1223 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1225 * No NEWS was kept for earlier releases. Known release dates include:
1226 ** release 3.2, 1991-08-28
1227 ** release 3.1, 1991-08-21
1228 ** release 3.0, 1991-08-21
1229 ** release 2.2, 1991-04-05
1230 ** release 2.1, 1991-01-01
1231 ** release 2.0, 1990-11-20
1232 ** release 1.2, 1990-07-03
1233 ** release 1.1, 1990-06-24
1234 ** release 1.0, 1990-06-22
1235 ** beginning of findutils history, 1987-02-21
1238 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1240 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1241 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1242 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1243 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1244 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf