1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.5-CVS
6 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
7 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
10 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
11 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
15 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
16 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
17 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
19 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
20 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
23 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
24 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
25 generating an assertion failure.
27 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
28 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
29 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
30 report was not mentioned.
32 ** Documentation Fixes
34 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
35 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
37 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
38 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
40 * Major changes in release 4.3.4
44 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
46 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
48 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
49 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
51 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
52 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
55 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
56 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
58 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
59 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
62 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
63 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
65 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
68 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
70 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
71 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
76 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
79 * Major changes in release 4.3.3
81 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
85 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
86 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
88 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
91 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
92 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
94 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
96 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
97 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
98 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
101 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
103 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
105 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
106 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
107 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
109 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
110 (see "Functional changes" below)
112 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
115 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
116 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
117 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
118 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
119 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
124 ** Functional changes
126 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
127 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
129 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
130 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
131 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
132 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
133 this change in the 4.2.x series).
135 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
136 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
137 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
139 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
148 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
149 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
150 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
151 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
154 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
157 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
158 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
161 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
162 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
163 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
164 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
167 If you configure the sourec code and then run the tests with "make
168 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
172 * Major changes in release 4.3.2
176 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
177 more than one start point was given on the command line.
179 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
180 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
181 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
182 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
183 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
184 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
187 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
188 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
190 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
191 now generates an error message.
193 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
194 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
197 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
199 ** Functional changes
201 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
202 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
203 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
204 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
205 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
208 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
209 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
210 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
211 which is probably surprising for most users.
214 ** Documentation Fixes
216 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
217 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
220 * Major changes in release 4.3.1
224 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
225 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
226 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
227 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
229 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
230 which have missing expressions, such as
237 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
238 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
239 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
240 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
241 specified the wrong directory).
243 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
244 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
245 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
246 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
247 problem was worse for -exec.
249 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
250 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
252 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
253 Savannah bug #16269).
255 ** Functional changes
257 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
258 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
259 about find's internal state and progress.
261 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
262 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
264 ** Performance Enhancements
266 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
267 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
268 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
269 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
270 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
271 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
272 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
273 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
274 and compare the optimised query with:
275 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
277 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
279 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
280 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
281 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
286 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
288 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
289 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
290 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
291 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
292 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
293 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
295 * Major changes in release 4.3.0
297 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
298 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
299 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
300 may change or go away.
302 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
303 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
305 ** Functional Changes
307 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
308 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
309 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
311 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
312 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
314 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
315 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
318 default configuration find oldfind
319 configure --with-fts find oldfind
320 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
322 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
323 can be read, written or executed respectively.
325 * Major changes in release 4.2.27
327 ** Warnings of Future Changes
329 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
330 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
331 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
332 message is given if you do this.
336 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
337 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
338 from the operating system.
340 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
341 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
342 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
344 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
345 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
346 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
348 ** Documentation Changes
350 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
351 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
354 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
355 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
357 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
358 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
361 * Major changes in release 4.2.26
363 ** Public Service Announcements
365 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
366 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
367 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
368 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
370 ** Functional Changes
372 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
373 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
374 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
376 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
377 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
378 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
379 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
382 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
383 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
384 option, which changes other semantics too).
388 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
389 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
391 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
392 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
393 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
394 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
395 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
396 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
397 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
398 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
399 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
400 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
402 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
403 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
404 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
405 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
406 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
407 containing 35396 entries.
409 ** Documentation Changes
411 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
412 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
414 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
415 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
417 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
420 * Major changes in release 4.2.25
424 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
425 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
426 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
428 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
429 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
430 of upper/lower case distinctions.
432 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
435 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
436 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
437 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
441 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
443 * Major changes in release 4.2.24
445 ** Documentation Changes
447 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
448 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
449 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
451 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
454 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
455 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
456 the command's standard input from stdin.
458 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
459 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
461 ** Functional Changes
463 *** Functional changes in locate
465 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
466 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
467 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
468 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
469 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
470 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
471 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
474 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
475 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
476 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
479 *** Functional changes in find
481 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
482 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
483 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
484 recommended practice however).
486 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
487 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
490 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
491 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
492 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
493 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
494 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
495 HSFS implementation).
499 *** Bug Fixes for find
501 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
502 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
503 gnulib version of this function).
505 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
508 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
509 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
511 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
512 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
513 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
514 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
515 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
516 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
517 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
519 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
520 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
521 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
523 * Major changes in release 4.2.23
525 ** Documentation Changes
527 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
530 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
532 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
534 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
535 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
536 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
537 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
540 * Major changes in release 4.2.22
544 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
545 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
546 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
547 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
548 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
549 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
550 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
554 None in this release.
556 ** Functional Changes to locate
558 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
559 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
560 later instances are ignored.
562 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
563 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
564 one or more patterns.
566 ** Documentation Changes
568 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
569 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
570 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
571 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
572 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
575 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
576 ** Functional Changes to find
578 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
579 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
580 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
581 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
583 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
584 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
585 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
586 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
587 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
588 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
591 ** Functional Changes to locate
593 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
594 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
595 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
596 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
597 different set of results).
599 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
600 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
603 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
605 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
606 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
608 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
609 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
611 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
612 ** Internationalization and Localization
613 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
616 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
617 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
619 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
622 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
623 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
624 (Savannah bug #12044).
626 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
627 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
628 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
631 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
632 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
634 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
635 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
636 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
637 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
638 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
640 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
642 ** Functionality Changes
643 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
644 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
645 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
647 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
649 ** Documentation enhancements
650 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
652 ** Internationalization and Localization
653 New Vietnamese message translation.
655 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
657 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
658 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
659 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
660 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
662 ** Documentation improvements
663 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
665 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
667 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
668 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
669 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
670 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
671 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
672 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
675 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
676 ** Functionality Changes
677 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
678 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
680 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
681 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
682 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
685 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
688 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
689 ** Functionality Changes
690 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
691 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
693 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
694 ** Functionality Changes
695 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
697 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
698 distributed tar file more than once.
699 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
700 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
701 ** Documentation improvements
702 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
704 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
705 ** Performance Enhancements
706 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
707 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
708 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
709 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
710 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
712 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
713 ** Functionality Changes
714 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
715 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
716 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
717 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
718 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
719 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
720 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
722 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
723 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
724 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
726 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
728 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
729 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
730 ** Functionality Changes
731 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
732 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
733 a more helpful error message.
734 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
735 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
736 statistics about the locate databases.
737 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
738 ** Documentation improvements
739 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
740 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
742 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
745 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
747 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
748 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
751 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
752 ** Functionality Changes
753 *** 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_".
754 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
755 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
758 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
759 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
760 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
762 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
763 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
764 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
765 ** Documentation improvements
766 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
767 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
769 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
770 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
771 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
774 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
775 ** Functionality Changes
776 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
777 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
778 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
779 ** Documentation improvements
780 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
781 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
782 are not are explained in this chapter.
784 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
786 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
788 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
789 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
791 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
793 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
794 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
795 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
796 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
799 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
800 ** Functionality Changes
801 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
802 find will follow symbolic links.
803 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
805 ** Documentation improvements
806 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
808 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
809 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
810 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
811 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
812 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
813 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
814 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
816 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
817 ** Functionality Changes
818 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
819 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
821 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
822 doesn't support that much).
823 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
824 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
825 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
826 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
827 by the use of the -nowarn option.
828 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
829 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
830 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
831 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
833 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
834 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
835 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
836 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
837 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
838 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
839 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
840 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
841 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
842 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
843 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
845 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
846 systems that have non-writable string constants.
847 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
848 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
849 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
851 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
853 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
854 ** Functionality Changes
855 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
856 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
857 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
858 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
859 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
860 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
861 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
862 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
863 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
864 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
865 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
866 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
867 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
868 directory we've just returned out of).
870 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
872 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
873 ** Documentation improvements
874 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
876 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
877 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
878 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
880 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
881 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
883 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
884 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
885 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
886 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
888 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
890 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
891 requires it, as explained at
892 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
894 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
896 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
897 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
898 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
899 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
900 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
902 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
904 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
905 ** Functionality Changes
906 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
907 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
908 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
909 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
910 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
911 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
912 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
913 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
914 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
915 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
916 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
917 find stats the file. There is also an option
918 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
919 ** Documentation improvements
920 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
921 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
922 The find manual page also now includes a section
923 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
924 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
925 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
926 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
927 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
928 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
930 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
932 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
933 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
934 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
935 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
936 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
937 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
938 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
939 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
940 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
941 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
942 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
943 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
944 database if it fails.
945 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
946 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
948 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
949 This was broken in 4.1.20.
951 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
952 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
953 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
955 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
956 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
957 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
958 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
960 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
962 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
963 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
964 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
966 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
967 correct bug in prune.
968 added --ignore-case option for locate
970 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
971 Add support for large files
973 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
974 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
976 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
977 added internationalization and localization.
979 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
980 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
981 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
983 * Major changes in release 4.1:
985 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
986 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
987 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
988 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
990 * Major changes in release 4.0:
994 *** Man page for updatedb.
995 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
998 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
999 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1000 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1001 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1002 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1003 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1006 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1007 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1008 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1009 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1010 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1011 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1013 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1016 *** Takes command-line options.
1019 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1020 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1021 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1023 * Major changes in release 3.8:
1025 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1026 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1027 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1029 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1031 ** locate can search multiple databases
1032 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1033 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1036 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1038 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1039 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1040 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1041 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1042 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf