1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.0-CVS
4 ** Documentation Changes
6 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
7 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
8 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
10 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
13 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
14 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
18 *** Functional changes in locate
20 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
21 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
22 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
23 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
24 Since this featrue is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
25 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
26 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
29 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
30 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
31 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
34 *** Functional changes in find
36 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
37 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
38 have several tests, each using a diftinct syntax (this is not
39 recommended practice however).
43 *** Bug Fixes for find
45 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
46 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
47 gnulib version of this function).
49 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
52 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
53 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
55 * Major changes in release 4.2.23
57 ** Documentation Changes
59 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
62 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
64 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
66 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
67 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
68 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
69 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
72 * Major changes in release 4.2.22
76 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
77 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
78 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
79 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
80 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
81 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
82 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
88 ** Functional Changes to locate
90 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
91 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
92 later instances are ignored.
94 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
95 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
98 ** Documentation Changes
100 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
101 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
102 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
103 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
104 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
107 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
108 ** Functional Changes to find
110 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
111 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
112 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
113 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
115 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
116 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
117 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
118 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
119 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
120 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
123 ** Functional Changes to locate
125 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
126 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
127 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
128 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
129 different set of results).
131 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
132 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
135 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
137 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
138 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
140 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
141 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
143 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
144 ** Internationalization and Localization
145 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
148 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
149 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
151 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
154 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
155 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
156 (Savannah bug #12044).
158 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
159 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
160 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
163 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
164 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
166 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
167 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
168 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
169 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
170 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
172 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
174 ** Functionality Changes
175 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
176 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
177 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
179 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
181 ** Documentation enhancements
182 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
184 ** Internationalization and Localization
185 New Vietnamese message translation.
187 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
189 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
190 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
191 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
192 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
194 ** Documentation improvements
195 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
197 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
199 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
200 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
201 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
202 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
203 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
204 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
207 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
208 ** Functionality Changes
209 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
210 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
212 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
213 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
214 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
217 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
220 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
221 ** Functionality Changes
222 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
223 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
225 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
226 ** Functionality Changes
227 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
229 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
230 distributed tar file more than once.
231 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
232 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
233 ** Documentation improvements
234 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
236 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
237 ** Performance Enhancements
238 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
239 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
240 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
241 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
242 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
244 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
245 ** Functionality Changes
246 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
247 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
248 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
249 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
250 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
251 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
252 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
254 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
255 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
256 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
258 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
260 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
261 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
262 ** Functionality Changes
263 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
264 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
265 a more helpful error message.
266 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
267 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
268 statistics about the locate databases.
269 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
270 ** Documentation improvements
271 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
272 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
274 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
277 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
279 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
280 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
283 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
284 ** Functionality Changes
285 *** 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_".
286 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
287 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
290 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
291 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
292 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
294 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
295 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
296 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
297 ** Documentation improvements
298 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
299 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
301 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
302 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
303 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
306 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
307 ** Functionality Changes
308 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
309 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
310 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
311 ** Documentation improvements
312 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
313 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
314 are not are explained in this chapter.
316 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
318 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
320 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
321 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
323 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
325 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
326 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
327 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
328 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
331 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
332 ** Functionality Changes
333 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
334 find will follow symbolic links.
335 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
337 ** Documentation improvements
338 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
340 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
341 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
342 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
343 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
344 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
345 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
346 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
348 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
349 ** Functionality Changes
350 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
351 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
353 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
354 doesn't support that much).
355 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
356 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
357 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
358 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
359 by the use of the -nowarn option.
360 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
361 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
362 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
363 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
365 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
366 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
367 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
368 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
369 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
370 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
371 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
372 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
373 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
374 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
375 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
377 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
378 systems that have non-writable string constants.
379 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
380 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
381 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
383 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
385 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
386 ** Functionality Changes
387 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
388 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
389 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
390 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
391 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
392 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
393 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
394 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
395 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
396 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
397 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
398 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
399 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
400 directory we've just returned out of).
402 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
404 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
405 ** Documentation improvements
406 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
408 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
409 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
410 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
412 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
413 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
415 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
416 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
417 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
418 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
420 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
422 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
423 requires it, as explained at
424 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
426 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
428 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
429 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
430 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
431 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
432 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
434 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
436 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
437 ** Functionality Changes
438 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
439 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
440 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
441 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
442 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
443 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
444 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
445 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
446 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
447 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
448 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
449 find stats the file. There is also an option
450 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
451 ** Documentation improvements
452 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
453 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
454 The find manual page also now includes a section
455 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
456 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
457 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
458 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
459 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
460 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
462 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
464 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
465 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
466 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
467 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
468 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
469 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
470 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
471 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
472 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
473 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
474 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
475 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
476 database if it fails.
477 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
478 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
480 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
481 This was broken in 4.1.20.
483 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
484 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
485 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
487 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
488 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
489 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
490 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
492 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
494 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
495 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
496 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
498 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
499 correct bug in prune.
500 added --ignore-case option for locate
502 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
503 Add support for large files
505 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
506 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
508 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
509 added internationalization and localization.
511 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
512 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
513 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
515 * Major changes in release 4.1:
517 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
518 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
519 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
520 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
522 * Major changes in release 4.0:
526 *** Man page for updatedb.
527 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
530 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
531 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
532 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
533 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
534 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
535 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
538 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
539 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
540 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
541 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
542 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
543 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
545 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
548 *** Takes command-line options.
551 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
552 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
553 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
555 * Major changes in release 3.8:
557 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
558 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
559 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
561 * Major changes in release 3.7:
563 ** locate can search multiple databases
564 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
565 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
568 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
570 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
571 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
572 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
573 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
574 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf