1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.11-CVS
6 When the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, "find -perm
7 +a+w" is rejected as invalid. Some other similar mode strings
8 starting with '+' which are not valid in POSIX are also rejected.
12 #21039: Setting the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable now turns off
13 warnings by default, because POSIX requires that only diagnostic
14 messages (and -ok prompts) are printed on STDERR, and diagnostic
15 messages must also result in a nonzero exit status.
17 ** Documentation Fixes
19 #21270: Formatting fixes to the xargs.1 manual page, including making
20 options bold instead of italic and making OPTIONS a section header
21 rather than a subsection.
23 #21628: find -perm /000 matches all files rather than none, since
24 findutils-4.3.3. The Texinfo documentation is now consistent with the
25 manual page on this point.
27 * Major changes in release 4.3.10, 2007-11-13
31 #21568: findutils gnulib code does not match the date in
32 import-gnulib.config. We now check out the gnulib code via
35 * Major changes in release 4.3.9, 2007-11-11
39 Findutils version 4.3.9 is released under version 3 of the GNU General
44 #20834: Avoid segmentation violation for -execdir when $PATH is
45 unset. Assume that the PATH is safe in this situation.
47 #20310: configure uses hosts's support status for "sort -z" when
48 generating the updatedb script for use on the target. This is
49 inappropriate when cross-compiling, so avoid doing that.
51 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
52 ordering comparison of function pointers.
54 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
55 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
57 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
58 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
59 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
60 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise. Likewise for find
61 (for example, with the -ok action).
63 #20547: The version information printed by find, xargs, locate,
64 updatedb, frcode and code now complies with the GNU Project's coding
67 #20662: Avoid memory leak in find -name and other places affected by
68 gnulib dirname module. The leak had been present since 4.3.1.
70 #20751: Avoid memory corruption in find -ls that has been present
73 #20871: Assertion failure introduced in 4.3.3, when oldfind is invoked
74 in a directory where the parent directory lacks search permission.
78 #20594: Allow fine-tuning of the default argument size used by xargs
79 and find at ./configure time.
81 #20688: The warning printed by -name or -iname when the pattern to
82 match contains a slash can now be silenced by -nowarn. This warning
83 was originally introduced unconditionally in 4.2.21.
85 Translation of locate --limit problems is improved.
87 POSIX will standardise -path, so the documentation no longer claims
88 that -wholename is the 'canonical' test, and -ipath no longer
91 ** Documentation Fixes
93 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
94 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
97 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
98 recent findutils release first.
100 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
102 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
104 The locate command's manual page now has a HISTORY section.
106 #20951: Very bad/unclear/confusing documentation of security checks in
109 #20865: Better documentation on the fact that -delete implies -depth
110 and that -delete interacts badly with -prune.
112 #20552: Fixed typos, formatting and section ordering issues in the
115 #20529: removed spurious 'o' in description of "xargs -a" in
118 #20232: The --max-database-age option of locate was added in release
119 4.3.3, but this file (NEWS) did not previously mention this fact.
123 Updated Dutch translation.
126 * Major changes in release 4.3.8, 2007-06-12
130 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
131 a buffer overrun, but at this time no exploit mechanism is known.
133 * Major changes in release 4.3.7, 2007-06-09
135 ** Functional changes
137 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
138 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
139 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
140 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
141 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
146 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
147 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
148 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
149 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
150 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
151 has potential security implications.
153 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
155 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
156 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
158 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
162 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
164 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
166 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
169 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
170 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
172 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
173 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
174 system does not provide it.
176 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
178 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
180 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
181 some non-GCC compilers
183 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
185 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
187 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
189 #19871: Typos in find.1
191 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
192 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
194 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
196 * Major changes in release 4.3.6, 2007-05-21
200 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
203 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
204 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
205 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
206 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
207 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
208 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
210 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
211 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
213 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
214 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
215 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
220 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
223 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
226 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
227 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
228 replacement for stdbool.h.
230 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
231 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
233 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
234 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
235 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
237 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
241 * Major changes in release 4.3.5, 2007-05-05
243 ** Functional changes
245 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
246 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
249 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
250 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
254 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
255 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
257 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
258 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
261 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
264 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
265 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
266 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
268 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
269 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
272 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
273 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
274 generating an assertion failure.
276 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
278 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
280 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
281 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
284 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
285 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
286 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
287 report was not mentioned.
289 ** Documentation Fixes
291 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
292 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
294 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
295 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
297 * Major changes in release 4.3.4, 2007-04-21
301 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
303 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
305 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
306 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
308 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
309 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
312 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
313 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
315 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
316 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
319 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
320 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
322 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
325 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
327 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
328 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
333 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
336 * Major changes in release 4.3.3, 2007-04-15
338 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
342 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
343 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
345 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
348 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
349 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
351 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
353 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
354 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
355 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
358 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
360 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
362 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
363 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
364 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
366 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
367 (see "Functional changes" below)
369 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
372 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
373 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
374 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
375 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
376 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
381 ** Functional changes
383 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
384 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
386 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
387 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
388 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
389 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
390 this change in the 4.2.x series).
392 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
393 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
394 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
396 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
405 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
406 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
407 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
408 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
411 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
414 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
415 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
418 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
419 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
420 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
421 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
424 If you configure the source code and then run the tests with "make
425 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
428 A new option, --max-database-age, has been added to locate.
431 * Major changes in release 4.3.2, 2006-11-25
435 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
436 more than one start point was given on the command line.
438 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
439 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
440 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
441 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
442 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
443 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
446 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
447 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
449 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
450 now generates an error message.
452 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
453 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
456 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
458 ** Functional changes
460 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
461 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
462 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
463 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
464 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
467 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
468 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
469 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
470 which is probably surprising for most users.
473 ** Documentation Fixes
475 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
476 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
479 * Major changes in release 4.3.1, 2006-08-06
483 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
484 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
485 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
486 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
488 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
489 which have missing expressions, such as
496 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
497 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
498 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
499 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
500 specified the wrong directory).
502 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
503 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
504 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
505 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
506 problem was worse for -exec.
508 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
509 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
511 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
512 Savannah bug #16269).
514 ** Functional changes
516 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
517 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
518 about find's internal state and progress.
520 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
521 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
523 ** Performance Enhancements
525 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
526 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
527 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
528 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
529 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
530 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
531 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
532 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
533 and compare the optimised query with:
534 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
536 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
538 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
539 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
540 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
545 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
547 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
548 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
549 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
550 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
551 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
552 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
554 * Major changes in release 4.3.0, 2005-12-12
556 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
557 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
558 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
559 may change or go away.
561 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
562 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
564 ** Functional Changes
566 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
567 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
568 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
570 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
571 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
573 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
574 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
577 default configuration find oldfind
578 configure --with-fts find oldfind
579 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
581 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
582 can be read, written or executed respectively.
584 * Major changes in release 4.2.27, 2005-12-06
586 ** Warnings of Future Changes
588 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
589 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
590 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
591 message is given if you do this.
595 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
596 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
597 from the operating system.
599 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
600 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
601 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
603 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
604 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
605 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
607 ** Documentation Changes
609 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
610 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
613 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
614 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
616 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
617 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
620 * Major changes in release 4.2.26, 2005-11-19
622 ** Public Service Announcements
624 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
625 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
626 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
627 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
629 ** Functional Changes
631 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
632 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
633 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
635 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
636 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
637 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
638 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
641 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
642 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
643 option, which changes other semantics too).
647 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
648 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
650 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
651 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
652 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
653 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
654 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
655 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
656 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
657 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
658 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
659 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
661 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
662 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
663 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
664 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
665 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
666 containing 35396 entries.
668 ** Documentation Changes
670 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
671 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
673 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
674 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
676 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
679 * Major changes in release 4.2.25, 2005-09-03
683 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
684 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
685 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
687 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
688 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
689 of upper/lower case distinctions.
691 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
694 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
695 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
696 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
700 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
702 * Major changes in release 4.2.24, 2005-07-29
704 ** Documentation Changes
706 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
707 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
708 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
710 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
713 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
714 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
715 the command's standard input from stdin.
717 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
718 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
720 ** Functional Changes
722 *** Functional changes in locate
724 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
725 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
726 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
727 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
728 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
729 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
730 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
733 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
734 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
735 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
738 *** Functional changes in find
740 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
741 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
742 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
743 recommended practice however).
745 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
746 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
749 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
750 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
751 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
752 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
753 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
754 HSFS implementation).
758 *** Bug Fixes for find
760 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
761 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
762 gnulib version of this function).
764 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
767 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
768 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
770 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
771 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
772 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
773 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
774 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
775 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
776 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
778 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
779 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
780 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
782 * Major changes in release 4.2.23, 2005-06-19
784 ** Documentation Changes
786 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
789 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
791 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
793 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
794 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
795 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
796 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
799 * Major changes in release 4.2.22, 2005-06-12
803 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
804 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
805 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
806 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
807 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
808 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
809 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
813 None in this release.
815 ** Functional Changes to locate
817 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
818 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
819 later instances are ignored.
821 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
822 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
823 one or more patterns.
825 ** Documentation Changes
827 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
828 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
829 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
830 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
831 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
834 * Major changes in release 4.2.21, 2005-06-07
835 ** Functional Changes to find
837 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
838 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
839 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
840 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
842 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
843 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
844 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
845 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
846 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
847 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
850 ** Functional Changes to locate
852 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
853 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
854 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
855 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
856 different set of results).
858 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
859 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
862 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
864 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
865 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
867 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
868 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
870 * Major changes in release 4.2.20, 2005-03-17
871 ** Internationalization and Localization
872 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
875 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
876 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
878 * Major changes in release 4.2.19, 2005-03-07
881 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
882 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
883 (Savannah bug #12044).
885 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
886 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
887 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
890 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
891 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
893 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
894 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
895 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
896 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
897 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
899 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
901 ** Functionality Changes
902 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
903 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
904 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
906 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
908 ** Documentation enhancements
909 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
911 ** Internationalization and Localization
912 New Vietnamese message translation.
914 * Major changes in release 4.2.18, 2005-02-16
916 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
917 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
918 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
919 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
921 ** Documentation improvements
922 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
924 * Major changes in release 4.2.17, 2005-02-08
926 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
927 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
928 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
929 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
930 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
931 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
934 * Major changes in release 4.2.16, 2005-02-05
935 ** Functionality Changes
936 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
937 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
939 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
940 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
941 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
944 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
947 * Major changes in release 4.2.15, 2005-01-29
948 ** Functionality Changes
949 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
950 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
952 * Major changes in release 4.2.14, 2005-01-25
953 ** Functionality Changes
954 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
956 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
957 distributed tar file more than once.
958 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
959 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
960 ** Documentation improvements
961 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
963 * Major changes in release 4.2.13, 2005-01-23
964 ** Performance Enhancements
965 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
966 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
967 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
968 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
969 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
971 * Major changes in release 4.2.12, 2005-01-22
972 ** Functionality Changes
973 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
974 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
975 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
976 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
977 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
978 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
979 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
981 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
982 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
983 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
985 * Major changes in release 4.2.11, 2004-12-12
987 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
988 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
989 ** Functionality Changes
990 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
991 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
992 a more helpful error message.
993 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
994 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
995 statistics about the locate databases.
996 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
997 ** Documentation improvements
998 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
999 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
1001 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
1004 * Major changes in release 4.2.10, 2004-12-06
1006 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
1007 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
1010 * Major changes in release 4.2.9, 2004-12-05
1011 ** Functionality Changes
1012 *** 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_".
1013 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
1014 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
1017 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
1018 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
1019 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
1021 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
1022 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
1023 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
1024 ** Documentation improvements
1025 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
1026 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
1028 * Major changes in release 4.2.8, 2004-11-24
1029 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
1030 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
1033 * Major changes in release 4.2.7, 2004-11-21
1034 ** Functionality Changes
1035 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
1036 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
1037 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
1038 ** Documentation improvements
1039 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
1040 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
1041 are not are explained in this chapter.
1043 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
1045 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
1047 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
1048 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
1050 * Major changes in release 4.2.6, 2004-11-21
1052 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
1053 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
1054 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
1055 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
1058 * Major changes in release 4.2.5, 2004-11-11
1059 ** Functionality Changes
1060 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
1061 find will follow symbolic links.
1062 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
1064 ** Documentation improvements
1065 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
1067 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
1068 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
1069 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
1070 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
1071 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
1072 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
1073 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
1075 * Major changes in release 4.2.4, 2004-11-08
1076 ** Functionality Changes
1077 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
1078 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
1080 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
1081 doesn't support that much).
1082 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
1083 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
1084 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
1085 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
1086 by the use of the -nowarn option.
1087 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
1088 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
1089 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
1090 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
1092 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
1093 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1094 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1095 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1096 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1097 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1098 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1099 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1100 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1101 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1102 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1104 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1105 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1106 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1107 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1108 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1110 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1112 * Major changes in release 4.2.3, 2004-10-30
1113 ** Functionality Changes
1114 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1115 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1116 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1117 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1118 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1119 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1120 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1121 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1122 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1123 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1124 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1125 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1126 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1127 directory we've just returned out of).
1129 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1131 * Major changes in release 4.2.2, 2004-10-24
1132 ** Documentation improvements
1133 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1135 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1136 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1137 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1139 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1140 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1142 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1143 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1144 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1145 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1147 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1149 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1150 requires it, as explained at
1151 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1153 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1155 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1156 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1157 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1158 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1159 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1161 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1163 * Major changes in release 4.2.0, 2003-06-14
1164 ** Functionality Changes
1165 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1166 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1167 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1168 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1169 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1170 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1171 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1172 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1173 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1174 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1175 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1176 find stats the file. There is also an option
1177 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1178 ** Documentation improvements
1179 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1180 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1181 The find manual page also now includes a section
1182 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1183 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1184 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1185 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1186 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1187 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1189 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1191 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1192 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1193 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1194 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1195 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1196 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1197 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1198 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1199 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1200 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1201 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1202 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1203 database if it fails.
1204 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1205 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1207 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1208 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1210 * Major changes in release 4.1.20, 2003-06-14:
1211 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1212 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1214 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1215 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1216 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1217 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1219 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1221 * Major changes in release 4.1.7, 2001-05-20:
1222 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1223 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1225 * Major changes in release 4.1.6, 2000-10-10:
1226 correct bug in prune.
1227 added --ignore-case option for locate
1229 * Major changes in release 4.1.5, 2000-04-12:
1230 Add support for large files
1232 * Major changes in release 4.1.4, 2000-02-26:
1233 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1235 * Major changes in release 4.1.3, 2000-01-27:
1236 added internationalization and localization.
1238 * Major changes in release 4.1.2, 2000-01-18:
1241 * Major changes in release 4.1.1, 1999-08-8:
1242 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1243 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1245 * Major changes in release 4.1, 1994-11-3:
1247 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1248 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1249 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1250 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1252 * Major changes in release 4.0, 1994-11-2:
1256 *** Man page for updatedb.
1257 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1260 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1261 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1262 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1263 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1264 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1265 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1268 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1269 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1270 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1271 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1272 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1273 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1275 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1278 *** Takes command-line options.
1281 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1282 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1283 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1285 * Major changes in release 3.8, 1993-03-29:
1287 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1288 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1289 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1291 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1293 ** locate can search multiple databases
1294 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1295 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1297 * No NEWS was kept for earlier releases. Known release dates include:
1298 ** release 3.2, 1991-08-28
1299 ** release 3.1, 1991-08-21
1300 ** release 3.0, 1991-08-21
1301 ** release 2.2, 1991-04-05
1302 ** release 2.1, 1991-01-01
1303 ** release 2.0, 1990-11-20
1304 ** release 1.2, 1990-07-03
1305 ** release 1.1, 1990-06-24
1306 ** release 1.0, 1990-06-22
1307 ** beginning of findutils history, 1987-02-21
1310 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1312 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1313 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1314 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1315 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1316 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf