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 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
16 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
18 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
19 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
22 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
25 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
26 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
27 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
29 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
30 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
33 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
34 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
35 generating an assertion failure.
37 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
39 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
41 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
42 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
45 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
46 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
47 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
48 report was not mentioned.
50 ** Documentation Fixes
52 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
53 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
55 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
56 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
58 * Major changes in release 4.3.4
62 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
64 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
66 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
67 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
69 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
70 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
73 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
74 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
76 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
77 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
80 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
81 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
83 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
86 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
88 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
89 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
94 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
97 * Major changes in release 4.3.3
99 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
103 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
104 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
106 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
109 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
110 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
112 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
114 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
115 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
116 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
119 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
121 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
123 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
124 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
125 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
127 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
128 (see "Functional changes" below)
130 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
133 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
134 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
135 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
136 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
137 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
142 ** Functional changes
144 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
145 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
147 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
148 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
149 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
150 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
151 this change in the 4.2.x series).
153 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
154 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
155 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
157 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
166 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
167 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
168 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
169 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
172 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
175 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
176 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
179 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
180 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
181 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
182 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
185 If you configure the sourec code and then run the tests with "make
186 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
190 * Major changes in release 4.3.2
194 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
195 more than one start point was given on the command line.
197 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
198 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
199 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
200 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
201 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
202 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
205 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
206 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
208 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
209 now generates an error message.
211 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
212 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
215 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
217 ** Functional changes
219 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
220 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
221 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
222 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
223 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
226 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
227 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
228 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
229 which is probably surprising for most users.
232 ** Documentation Fixes
234 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
235 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
238 * Major changes in release 4.3.1
242 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
243 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
244 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
245 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
247 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
248 which have missing expressions, such as
255 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
256 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
257 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
258 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
259 specified the wrong directory).
261 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
262 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
263 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
264 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
265 problem was worse for -exec.
267 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
268 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
270 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
271 Savannah bug #16269).
273 ** Functional changes
275 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
276 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
277 about find's internal state and progress.
279 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
280 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
282 ** Performance Enhancements
284 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
285 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
286 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
287 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
288 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
289 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
290 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
291 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
292 and compare the optimised query with:
293 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
295 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
297 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
298 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
299 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
304 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
306 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
307 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
308 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
309 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
310 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
311 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
313 * Major changes in release 4.3.0
315 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
316 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
317 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
318 may change or go away.
320 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
321 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
323 ** Functional Changes
325 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
326 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
327 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
329 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
330 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
332 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
333 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
336 default configuration find oldfind
337 configure --with-fts find oldfind
338 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
340 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
341 can be read, written or executed respectively.
343 * Major changes in release 4.2.27
345 ** Warnings of Future Changes
347 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
348 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
349 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
350 message is given if you do this.
354 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
355 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
356 from the operating system.
358 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
359 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
360 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
362 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
363 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
364 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
366 ** Documentation Changes
368 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
369 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
372 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
373 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
375 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
376 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
379 * Major changes in release 4.2.26
381 ** Public Service Announcements
383 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
384 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
385 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
386 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
388 ** Functional Changes
390 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
391 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
392 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
394 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
395 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
396 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
397 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
400 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
401 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
402 option, which changes other semantics too).
406 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
407 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
409 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
410 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
411 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
412 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
413 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
414 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
415 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
416 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
417 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
418 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
420 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
421 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
422 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
423 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
424 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
425 containing 35396 entries.
427 ** Documentation Changes
429 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
430 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
432 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
433 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
435 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
438 * Major changes in release 4.2.25
442 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
443 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
444 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
446 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
447 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
448 of upper/lower case distinctions.
450 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
453 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
454 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
455 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
459 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
461 * Major changes in release 4.2.24
463 ** Documentation Changes
465 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
466 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
467 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
469 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
472 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
473 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
474 the command's standard input from stdin.
476 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
477 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
479 ** Functional Changes
481 *** Functional changes in locate
483 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
484 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
485 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
486 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
487 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
488 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
489 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
492 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
493 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
494 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
497 *** Functional changes in find
499 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
500 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
501 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
502 recommended practice however).
504 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
505 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
508 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
509 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
510 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
511 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
512 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
513 HSFS implementation).
517 *** Bug Fixes for find
519 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
520 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
521 gnulib version of this function).
523 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
526 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
527 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
529 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
530 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
531 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
532 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
533 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
534 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
535 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
537 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
538 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
539 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
541 * Major changes in release 4.2.23
543 ** Documentation Changes
545 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
548 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
550 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
552 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
553 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
554 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
555 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
558 * Major changes in release 4.2.22
562 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
563 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
564 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
565 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
566 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
567 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
568 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
572 None in this release.
574 ** Functional Changes to locate
576 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
577 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
578 later instances are ignored.
580 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
581 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
582 one or more patterns.
584 ** Documentation Changes
586 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
587 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
588 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
589 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
590 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
593 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
594 ** Functional Changes to find
596 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
597 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
598 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
599 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
601 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
602 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
603 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
604 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
605 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
606 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
609 ** Functional Changes to locate
611 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
612 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
613 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
614 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
615 different set of results).
617 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
618 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
621 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
623 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
624 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
626 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
627 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
629 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
630 ** Internationalization and Localization
631 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
634 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
635 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
637 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
640 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
641 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
642 (Savannah bug #12044).
644 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
645 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
646 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
649 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
650 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
652 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
653 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
654 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
655 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
656 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
658 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
660 ** Functionality Changes
661 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
662 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
663 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
665 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
667 ** Documentation enhancements
668 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
670 ** Internationalization and Localization
671 New Vietnamese message translation.
673 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
675 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
676 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
677 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
678 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
680 ** Documentation improvements
681 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
683 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
685 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
686 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
687 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
688 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
689 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
690 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
693 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
694 ** Functionality Changes
695 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
696 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
698 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
699 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
700 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
703 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
706 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
707 ** Functionality Changes
708 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
709 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
711 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
712 ** Functionality Changes
713 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
715 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
716 distributed tar file more than once.
717 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
718 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
719 ** Documentation improvements
720 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
722 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
723 ** Performance Enhancements
724 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
725 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
726 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
727 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
728 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
730 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
731 ** Functionality Changes
732 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
733 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
734 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
735 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
736 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
737 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
738 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
740 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
741 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
742 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
744 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
746 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
747 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
748 ** Functionality Changes
749 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
750 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
751 a more helpful error message.
752 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
753 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
754 statistics about the locate databases.
755 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
756 ** Documentation improvements
757 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
758 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
760 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
763 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
765 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
766 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
769 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
770 ** Functionality Changes
771 *** 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_".
772 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
773 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
776 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
777 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
778 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
780 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
781 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
782 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
783 ** Documentation improvements
784 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
785 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
787 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
788 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
789 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
792 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
793 ** Functionality Changes
794 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
795 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
796 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
797 ** Documentation improvements
798 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
799 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
800 are not are explained in this chapter.
802 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
804 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
806 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
807 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
809 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
811 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
812 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
813 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
814 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
817 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
818 ** Functionality Changes
819 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
820 find will follow symbolic links.
821 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
823 ** Documentation improvements
824 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
826 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
827 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
828 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
829 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
830 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
831 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
832 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
834 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
835 ** Functionality Changes
836 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
837 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
839 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
840 doesn't support that much).
841 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
842 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
843 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
844 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
845 by the use of the -nowarn option.
846 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
847 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
848 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
849 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
851 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
852 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
853 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
854 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
855 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
856 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
857 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
858 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
859 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
860 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
861 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
863 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
864 systems that have non-writable string constants.
865 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
866 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
867 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
869 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
871 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
872 ** Functionality Changes
873 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
874 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
875 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
876 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
877 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
878 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
879 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
880 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
881 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
882 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
883 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
884 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
885 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
886 directory we've just returned out of).
888 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
890 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
891 ** Documentation improvements
892 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
894 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
895 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
896 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
898 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
899 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
901 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
902 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
903 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
904 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
906 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
908 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
909 requires it, as explained at
910 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
912 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
914 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
915 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
916 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
917 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
918 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
920 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
922 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
923 ** Functionality Changes
924 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
925 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
926 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
927 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
928 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
929 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
930 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
931 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
932 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
933 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
934 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
935 find stats the file. There is also an option
936 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
937 ** Documentation improvements
938 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
939 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
940 The find manual page also now includes a section
941 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
942 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
943 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
944 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
945 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
946 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
948 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
950 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
951 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
952 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
953 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
954 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
955 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
956 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
957 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
958 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
959 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
960 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
961 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
962 database if it fails.
963 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
964 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
966 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
967 This was broken in 4.1.20.
969 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
970 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
971 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
973 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
974 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
975 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
976 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
978 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
980 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
981 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
982 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
984 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
985 correct bug in prune.
986 added --ignore-case option for locate
988 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
989 Add support for large files
991 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
992 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
994 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
995 added internationalization and localization.
997 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
998 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
999 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1001 * Major changes in release 4.1:
1003 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1004 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1005 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1006 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1008 * Major changes in release 4.0:
1012 *** Man page for updatedb.
1013 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1016 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1017 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1018 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1019 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1020 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1021 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1024 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1025 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1026 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1027 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1028 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1029 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1031 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1034 *** Takes command-line options.
1037 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1038 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1039 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1041 * Major changes in release 3.8:
1043 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1044 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1045 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1047 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1049 ** locate can search multiple databases
1050 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1051 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1054 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1056 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1057 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1058 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1059 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1060 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf