1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.9-CVS
6 Findutils version 4.3.9 is released under version 3 of the GNU General
10 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
11 ordering comparison of function pointers.
13 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
14 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
16 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
17 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
18 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
19 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise.
21 ** Documentation Fixes
23 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
24 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
27 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
28 recent findutils release first.
30 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
32 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
34 * Major changes in release 4.3.8
38 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
39 a buffer overrun, but at this time no explot mechanism is known.
41 * Major changes in release 4.3.7
45 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
46 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
47 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
48 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
49 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
54 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
55 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
56 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
57 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
58 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
59 has potential security implications.
61 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
63 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
64 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
66 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
70 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
72 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
74 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
77 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
78 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
80 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
81 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
82 system does not provide it.
84 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
86 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
88 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
89 some non-GCC compilers
91 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
93 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
95 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
97 #19871: Typos in find.1
99 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
100 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
102 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
104 * Major changes in release 4.3.6
108 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
111 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
112 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
113 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
114 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
115 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
116 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
118 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
119 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
121 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
122 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
123 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
128 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
131 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
134 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
135 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
136 replacement for stdbool.h.
138 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
139 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
141 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
142 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
143 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
145 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
149 * Major changes in release 4.3.5
151 ** Functional changes
153 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
154 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
157 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
158 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
162 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
163 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
165 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
166 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
169 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
172 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
173 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
174 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
176 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
177 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
180 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
181 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
182 generating an assertion failure.
184 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
186 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
188 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
189 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
192 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
193 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
194 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
195 report was not mentioned.
197 ** Documentation Fixes
199 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
200 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
202 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
203 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
205 * Major changes in release 4.3.4
209 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
211 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
213 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
214 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
216 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
217 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
220 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
221 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
223 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
224 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
227 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
228 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
230 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
233 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
235 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
236 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
241 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
244 * Major changes in release 4.3.3
246 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
250 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
251 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
253 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
256 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
257 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
259 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
261 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
262 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
263 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
266 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
268 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
270 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
271 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
272 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
274 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
275 (see "Functional changes" below)
277 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
280 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
281 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
282 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
283 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
284 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
289 ** Functional changes
291 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
292 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
294 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
295 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
296 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
297 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
298 this change in the 4.2.x series).
300 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
301 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
302 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
304 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
313 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
314 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
315 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
316 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
319 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
322 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
323 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
326 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
327 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
328 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
329 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
332 If you configure the sourec code and then run the tests with "make
333 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
337 * Major changes in release 4.3.2
341 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
342 more than one start point was given on the command line.
344 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
345 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
346 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
347 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
348 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
349 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
352 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
353 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
355 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
356 now generates an error message.
358 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
359 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
362 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
364 ** Functional changes
366 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
367 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
368 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
369 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
370 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
373 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
374 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
375 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
376 which is probably surprising for most users.
379 ** Documentation Fixes
381 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
382 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
385 * Major changes in release 4.3.1
389 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
390 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
391 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
392 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
394 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
395 which have missing expressions, such as
402 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
403 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
404 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
405 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
406 specified the wrong directory).
408 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
409 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
410 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
411 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
412 problem was worse for -exec.
414 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
415 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
417 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
418 Savannah bug #16269).
420 ** Functional changes
422 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
423 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
424 about find's internal state and progress.
426 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
427 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
429 ** Performance Enhancements
431 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
432 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
433 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
434 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
435 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
436 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
437 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
438 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
439 and compare the optimised query with:
440 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
442 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
444 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
445 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
446 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
451 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
453 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
454 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
455 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
456 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
457 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
458 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
460 * Major changes in release 4.3.0
462 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
463 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
464 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
465 may change or go away.
467 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
468 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
470 ** Functional Changes
472 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
473 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
474 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
476 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
477 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
479 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
480 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
483 default configuration find oldfind
484 configure --with-fts find oldfind
485 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
487 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
488 can be read, written or executed respectively.
490 * Major changes in release 4.2.27
492 ** Warnings of Future Changes
494 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
495 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
496 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
497 message is given if you do this.
501 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
502 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
503 from the operating system.
505 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
506 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
507 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
509 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
510 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
511 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
513 ** Documentation Changes
515 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
516 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
519 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
520 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
522 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
523 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
526 * Major changes in release 4.2.26
528 ** Public Service Announcements
530 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
531 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
532 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
533 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
535 ** Functional Changes
537 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
538 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
539 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
541 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
542 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
543 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
544 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
547 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
548 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
549 option, which changes other semantics too).
553 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
554 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
556 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
557 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
558 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
559 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
560 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
561 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
562 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
563 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
564 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
565 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
567 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
568 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
569 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
570 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
571 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
572 containing 35396 entries.
574 ** Documentation Changes
576 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
577 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
579 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
580 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
582 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
585 * Major changes in release 4.2.25
589 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
590 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
591 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
593 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
594 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
595 of upper/lower case distinctions.
597 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
600 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
601 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
602 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
606 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
608 * Major changes in release 4.2.24
610 ** Documentation Changes
612 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
613 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
614 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
616 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
619 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
620 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
621 the command's standard input from stdin.
623 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
624 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
626 ** Functional Changes
628 *** Functional changes in locate
630 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
631 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
632 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
633 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
634 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
635 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
636 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
639 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
640 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
641 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
644 *** Functional changes in find
646 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
647 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
648 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
649 recommended practice however).
651 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
652 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
655 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
656 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
657 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
658 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
659 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
660 HSFS implementation).
664 *** Bug Fixes for find
666 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
667 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
668 gnulib version of this function).
670 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
673 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
674 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
676 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
677 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
678 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
679 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
680 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
681 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
682 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
684 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
685 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
686 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
688 * Major changes in release 4.2.23
690 ** Documentation Changes
692 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
695 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
697 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
699 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
700 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
701 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
702 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
705 * Major changes in release 4.2.22
709 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
710 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
711 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
712 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
713 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
714 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
715 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
719 None in this release.
721 ** Functional Changes to locate
723 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
724 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
725 later instances are ignored.
727 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
728 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
729 one or more patterns.
731 ** Documentation Changes
733 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
734 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
735 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
736 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
737 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
740 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
741 ** Functional Changes to find
743 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
744 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
745 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
746 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
748 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
749 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
750 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
751 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
752 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
753 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
756 ** Functional Changes to locate
758 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
759 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
760 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
761 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
762 different set of results).
764 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
765 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
768 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
770 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
771 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
773 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
774 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
776 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
777 ** Internationalization and Localization
778 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
781 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
782 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
784 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
787 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
788 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
789 (Savannah bug #12044).
791 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
792 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
793 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
796 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
797 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
799 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
800 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
801 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
802 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
803 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
805 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
807 ** Functionality Changes
808 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
809 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
810 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
812 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
814 ** Documentation enhancements
815 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
817 ** Internationalization and Localization
818 New Vietnamese message translation.
820 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
822 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
823 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
824 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
825 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
827 ** Documentation improvements
828 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
830 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
832 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
833 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
834 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
835 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
836 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
837 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
840 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
841 ** Functionality Changes
842 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
843 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
845 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
846 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
847 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
850 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
853 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
854 ** Functionality Changes
855 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
856 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
858 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
859 ** Functionality Changes
860 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
862 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
863 distributed tar file more than once.
864 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
865 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
866 ** Documentation improvements
867 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
869 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
870 ** Performance Enhancements
871 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
872 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
873 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
874 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
875 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
877 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
878 ** Functionality Changes
879 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
880 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
881 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
882 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
883 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
884 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
885 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
887 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
888 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
889 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
891 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
893 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
894 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
895 ** Functionality Changes
896 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
897 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
898 a more helpful error message.
899 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
900 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
901 statistics about the locate databases.
902 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
903 ** Documentation improvements
904 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
905 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
907 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
910 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
912 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
913 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
916 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
917 ** Functionality Changes
918 *** 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_".
919 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
920 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
923 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
924 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
925 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
927 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
928 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
929 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
930 ** Documentation improvements
931 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
932 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
934 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
935 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
936 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
939 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
940 ** Functionality Changes
941 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
942 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
943 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
944 ** Documentation improvements
945 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
946 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
947 are not are explained in this chapter.
949 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
951 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
953 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
954 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
956 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
958 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
959 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
960 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
961 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
964 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
965 ** Functionality Changes
966 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
967 find will follow symbolic links.
968 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
970 ** Documentation improvements
971 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
973 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
974 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
975 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
976 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
977 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
978 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
979 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
981 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
982 ** Functionality Changes
983 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
984 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
986 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
987 doesn't support that much).
988 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
989 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
990 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
991 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
992 by the use of the -nowarn option.
993 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
994 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
995 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
996 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
998 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
999 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1000 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1001 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1002 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1003 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1004 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1005 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1006 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1007 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1008 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1010 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1011 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1012 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1013 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1014 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1016 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1018 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
1019 ** Functionality Changes
1020 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1021 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1022 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1023 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1024 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1025 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1026 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1027 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1028 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1029 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1030 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1031 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1032 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1033 directory we've just returned out of).
1035 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1037 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
1038 ** Documentation improvements
1039 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1041 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1042 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1043 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1045 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1046 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1048 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1049 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1050 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1051 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1053 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
1055 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1056 requires it, as explained at
1057 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1059 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
1061 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1062 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1063 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1064 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1065 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1067 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1069 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
1070 ** Functionality Changes
1071 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1072 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1073 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1074 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1075 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1076 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1077 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1078 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1079 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1080 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1081 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1082 find stats the file. There is also an option
1083 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1084 ** Documentation improvements
1085 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1086 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1087 The find manual page also now includes a section
1088 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1089 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1090 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1091 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1092 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1093 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1095 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1097 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1098 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1099 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1100 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1101 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1102 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1103 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1104 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1105 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1106 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1107 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1108 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1109 database if it fails.
1110 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1111 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1113 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1114 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1116 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
1117 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1118 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1120 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1121 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1122 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1123 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1125 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1127 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
1128 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1129 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1131 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
1132 correct bug in prune.
1133 added --ignore-case option for locate
1135 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
1136 Add support for large files
1138 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
1139 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1141 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
1142 added internationalization and localization.
1144 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
1145 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1146 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1148 * Major changes in release 4.1:
1150 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1151 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1152 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1153 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1155 * Major changes in release 4.0:
1159 *** Man page for updatedb.
1160 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1163 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1164 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1165 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1166 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1167 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1168 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1171 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1172 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1173 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1174 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1175 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1176 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1178 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1181 *** Takes command-line options.
1184 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1185 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1186 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1188 * Major changes in release 3.8:
1190 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1191 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1192 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1194 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1196 ** locate can search multiple databases
1197 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1198 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1201 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1203 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1204 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1205 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1206 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1207 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf