1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
3 ** Functionality Changes
4 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
5 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
6 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
7 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
8 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
9 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
10 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
11 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
12 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
13 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
14 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
15 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
16 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
17 directoru we've just returned out of).
19 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
21 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
22 ** Documentation improvements
23 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
25 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
26 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
27 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
29 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
30 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
32 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
33 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
34 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
35 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
37 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
39 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
40 requires it, as explained at
41 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
43 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
45 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
46 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
47 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
48 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
49 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
51 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
53 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
54 ** Functionality Changes
55 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
56 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
57 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
58 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
59 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
60 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
61 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
62 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
63 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
64 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
65 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
66 find stats the file. There is also an option
67 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
68 ** Documentation improvements
69 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
70 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
71 The find manual page also now includes a section
72 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
73 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
74 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
75 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
76 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
77 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
79 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
81 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
82 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
83 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
84 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
85 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
86 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
87 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
88 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
89 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
90 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
91 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
92 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
94 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
95 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
97 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
98 This was broken in 4.1.20.
100 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
101 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
102 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
104 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
105 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
106 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
107 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
109 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
111 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
112 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
113 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
115 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
116 correct bug in prune.
117 added --ignore-case option for locate
119 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
120 Add support for large files
122 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
123 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
125 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
126 added internationalization and localization.
128 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
129 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
130 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
132 * Major changes in release 4.1:
134 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
135 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
136 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
137 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
139 * Major changes in release 4.0:
143 *** Man page for updatedb.
144 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
147 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
148 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
149 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
150 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
151 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
152 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
155 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
156 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
157 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
158 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
159 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
160 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
162 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
165 *** Takes command-line options.
168 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
169 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
170 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
172 * Major changes in release 3.8:
174 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
175 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
176 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
178 * Major changes in release 3.7:
180 ** locate can search multiple databases
181 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
182 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
185 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
187 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
188 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
189 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
190 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
191 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf