1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
3 * Major changes in release 4.3.13-CVS
6 #21960: xargs should collect the exit status of child processes even if
7 the total count of unreaped children has not yet reached the maximum
10 * Major changes in release 4.3.12, 2007-12-19
14 #15384: Find misbehaves when parent directory is not readable.
16 ** Documentation Fixes
18 More examples in the xargs manual page, including a portable analogue
23 Updated translations: Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Vietnamese.
26 * Major changes in release 4.3.11, 2007-12-02
30 When the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set, "find -perm
31 +a+w" is rejected as invalid. Some other similar mode strings
32 starting with '+' which are not valid in POSIX are also rejected.
34 The -prune action now always evaluates as true (this is also a
40 #21568: Switch to checking the gnulib code out with native git, not
41 CVS. This affects mainly those who check findutils code out of CVS.
42 This is not the first time this bug has been fixed (the previous fix
43 used "cvs update -D", which git-cvspserver silently does not
46 #21039: Setting the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable now turns off
47 warnings by default, because POSIX requires that only diagnostic
48 messages (and -ok prompts) are printed on STDERR, and diagnostic
49 messages must also result in a nonzero exit status.
51 #20970: Trailing slash on directory arguments breaks -name. "find
52 foo/ -name foo" now correctly matches foo and printf foo/. See POSIX
53 interp http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/uploads/40/14959/AI-186.txt
55 #20865: Using both -delete and -prune without explicitly using -depth
56 is now an error. Traditionally, -delete has always turned -depth on
57 anyway, so this is not a functional change. However, using -depth
58 (implicitly or explicitly) makes -prune a no-op. This change is
59 intended to avoid nasty surprises for people who test with
60 "-print" and then change it to "-delete" when they are happy.
62 #20803: POSIX requires that -prune always returns true. Previously it
63 returned false when -depth was in effect and true otherwise.
65 #20802: If -delete fails, find's exit status will now be non-zero.
66 However, find still skips trying to delete ".".
68 ** Documentation Fixes
69 #21635: Some of the documentation files had missing copying
70 conditions. The missing files now have copying headers, and these
71 are compatible with each other (GNU FDL 1.2).
73 #21634: No copy of FDL 1.2 included with the source code
75 #21633: Missing copyright/license header in some documentation.
77 #21628: find -perm /000 matches all files rather than none, since
78 findutils-4.3.3. The Texinfo documentation is now consistent with the
79 manual page on this point.
81 #21270: Formatting fixes to the xargs.1 manual page, including making
82 options bold instead of italic and making OPTIONS a section header
83 rather than a subsection.
85 * Major changes in release 4.3.10, 2007-11-13
89 #21568: findutils gnulib code does not match the date in
90 import-gnulib.config. We now check out the gnulib code via
93 * Major changes in release 4.3.9, 2007-11-11
97 Findutils version 4.3.9 is released under version 3 of the GNU General
102 #20834: Avoid segmentation violation for -execdir when $PATH is
103 unset. Assume that the PATH is safe in this situation.
105 #20310: configure uses hosts's support status for "sort -z" when
106 generating the updatedb script for use on the target. This is
107 inappropriate when cross-compiling, so avoid doing that.
109 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
110 ordering comparison of function pointers.
112 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
113 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
115 #20273: When xargs is successful without consuming all of stdin (for
116 example, with the -E option), and stdin is seekable, xargs now
117 correctly restores the file position, even on platforms where exit()
118 does not follow the POSIX rules of doing likewise. Likewise for find
119 (for example, with the -ok action).
121 #20547: The version information printed by find, xargs, locate,
122 updatedb, frcode and code now complies with the GNU Project's coding
125 #20662: Avoid memory leak in find -name and other places affected by
126 gnulib dirname module. The leak had been present since 4.3.1.
128 #20751: Avoid memory corruption in find -ls that has been present
131 #20871: Assertion failure introduced in 4.3.3, when oldfind is invoked
132 in a directory where the parent directory lacks search permission.
136 #20594: Allow fine-tuning of the default argument size used by xargs
137 and find at ./configure time.
139 #20688: The warning printed by -name or -iname when the pattern to
140 match contains a slash can now be silenced by -nowarn. This warning
141 was originally introduced unconditionally in 4.2.21.
143 Translation of locate --limit problems is improved.
145 POSIX will standardise -path, so the documentation no longer claims
146 that -wholename is the 'canonical' test, and -ipath no longer
149 ** Documentation Fixes
151 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
152 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
155 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
156 recent findutils release first.
158 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
160 Added an extra worked example for find (copying a subset of files).
162 The locate command's manual page now has a HISTORY section.
164 #20951: Very bad/unclear/confusing documentation of security checks in
167 #20865: Better documentation on the fact that -delete implies -depth
168 and that -delete interacts badly with -prune.
170 #20552: Fixed typos, formatting and section ordering issues in the
173 #20529: removed spurious 'o' in description of "xargs -a" in
176 #20232: The --max-database-age option of locate was added in release
177 4.3.3, but this file (NEWS) did not previously mention this fact.
181 Updated Dutch translation.
184 * Major changes in release 4.3.8, 2007-06-12
188 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
189 a buffer overrun, but at this time no exploit mechanism is known.
191 * Major changes in release 4.3.7, 2007-06-09
193 ** Functional changes
195 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
196 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
197 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
198 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
199 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
204 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
205 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
206 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
207 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
208 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
209 has potential security implications.
211 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
213 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
214 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
216 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
220 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
222 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
224 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
227 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
228 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
230 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
231 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
232 system does not provide it.
234 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
236 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
238 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
239 some non-GCC compilers
241 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
243 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
245 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
247 #19871: Typos in find.1
249 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
250 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
252 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
254 * Major changes in release 4.3.6, 2007-05-21
258 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
261 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
262 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
263 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
264 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
265 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
266 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
268 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
269 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
271 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
272 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
273 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
278 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
281 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
284 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
285 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
286 replacement for stdbool.h.
288 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
289 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
291 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
292 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
293 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
295 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
299 * Major changes in release 4.3.5, 2007-05-05
301 ** Functional changes
303 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
304 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
307 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
308 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
312 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
313 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
315 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
316 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
319 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
322 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
323 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
324 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
326 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
327 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
330 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
331 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
332 generating an assertion failure.
334 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
336 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
338 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
339 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
342 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
343 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
344 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
345 report was not mentioned.
347 ** Documentation Fixes
349 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
350 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
352 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
353 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
355 * Major changes in release 4.3.4, 2007-04-21
359 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
361 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
363 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
364 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
366 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
367 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
370 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
371 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
373 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
374 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
377 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
378 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
380 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
383 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
385 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
386 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
391 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
394 * Major changes in release 4.3.3, 2007-04-15
396 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
400 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
401 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
403 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
406 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
407 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
409 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
411 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
412 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
413 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
416 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
418 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
420 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
421 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
422 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
424 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
425 (see "Functional changes" below)
427 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
430 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
431 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
432 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
433 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
434 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
439 ** Functional changes
441 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
442 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
444 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
445 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
446 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
447 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
448 this change in the 4.2.x series).
450 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
451 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
452 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
454 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
463 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
464 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
465 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
466 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
469 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
472 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
473 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
476 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
477 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
478 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
479 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
482 If you configure the source code and then run the tests with "make
483 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
486 A new option, --max-database-age, has been added to locate.
489 * Major changes in release 4.3.2, 2006-11-25
493 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
494 more than one start point was given on the command line.
496 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
497 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
498 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
499 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
500 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
501 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
504 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
505 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
507 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
508 now generates an error message.
510 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
511 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
514 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
516 ** Functional changes
518 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
519 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
520 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
521 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
522 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
525 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
526 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
527 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
528 which is probably surprising for most users.
531 ** Documentation Fixes
533 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
534 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
537 * Major changes in release 4.3.1, 2006-08-06
541 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
542 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
543 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
544 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
546 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
547 which have missing expressions, such as
554 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
555 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
556 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
557 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
558 specified the wrong directory).
560 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
561 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
562 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
563 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
564 problem was worse for -exec.
566 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
567 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
569 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
570 Savannah bug #16269).
572 ** Functional changes
574 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
575 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
576 about find's internal state and progress.
578 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
579 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
581 ** Performance Enhancements
583 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
584 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
585 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
586 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
587 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
588 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
589 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
590 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
591 and compare the optimised query with:
592 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
594 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
596 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
597 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
598 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
603 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
605 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
606 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
607 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
608 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
609 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
610 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
612 * Major changes in release 4.3.0, 2005-12-12
614 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
615 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
616 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
617 may change or go away.
619 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
620 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
622 ** Functional Changes
624 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
625 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
626 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
628 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
629 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
631 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
632 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
635 default configuration find oldfind
636 configure --with-fts find oldfind
637 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
639 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
640 can be read, written or executed respectively.
642 * Major changes in release 4.2.27, 2005-12-06
644 ** Warnings of Future Changes
646 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
647 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
648 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
649 message is given if you do this.
653 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
654 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
655 from the operating system.
657 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
658 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
659 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
661 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
662 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
663 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
665 ** Documentation Changes
667 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
668 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
671 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
672 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
674 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
675 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
678 * Major changes in release 4.2.26, 2005-11-19
680 ** Public Service Announcements
682 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
683 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
684 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
685 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
687 ** Functional Changes
689 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
690 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
691 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
693 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
694 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
695 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
696 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
699 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
700 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
701 option, which changes other semantics too).
705 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
706 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
708 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
709 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
710 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
711 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
712 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
713 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
714 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
715 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
716 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
717 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
719 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
720 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
721 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
722 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
723 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
724 containing 35396 entries.
726 ** Documentation Changes
728 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
729 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
731 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
732 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
734 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
737 * Major changes in release 4.2.25, 2005-09-03
741 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
742 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
743 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
745 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
746 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
747 of upper/lower case distinctions.
749 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
752 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
753 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
754 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
758 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
760 * Major changes in release 4.2.24, 2005-07-29
762 ** Documentation Changes
764 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
765 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
766 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
768 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
771 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
772 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
773 the command's standard input from stdin.
775 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
776 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
778 ** Functional Changes
780 *** Functional changes in locate
782 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
783 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
784 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
785 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
786 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
787 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
788 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
791 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
792 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
793 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
796 *** Functional changes in find
798 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
799 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
800 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
801 recommended practice however).
803 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
804 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
807 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
808 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
809 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
810 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
811 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
812 HSFS implementation).
816 *** Bug Fixes for find
818 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
819 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
820 gnulib version of this function).
822 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
825 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
826 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
828 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
829 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
830 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
831 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
832 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
833 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
834 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
836 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
837 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
838 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
840 * Major changes in release 4.2.23, 2005-06-19
842 ** Documentation Changes
844 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
847 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
849 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
851 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
852 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
853 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
854 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
857 * Major changes in release 4.2.22, 2005-06-12
861 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
862 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
863 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
864 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
865 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
866 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
867 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
871 None in this release.
873 ** Functional Changes to locate
875 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
876 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
877 later instances are ignored.
879 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
880 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
881 one or more patterns.
883 ** Documentation Changes
885 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
886 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
887 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
888 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
889 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
892 * Major changes in release 4.2.21, 2005-06-07
893 ** Functional Changes to find
895 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
896 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
897 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
898 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
900 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
901 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
902 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
903 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
904 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
905 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
908 ** Functional Changes to locate
910 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
911 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
912 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
913 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
914 different set of results).
916 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
917 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
920 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
922 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
923 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
925 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
926 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
928 * Major changes in release 4.2.20, 2005-03-17
929 ** Internationalization and Localization
930 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
933 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
934 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
936 * Major changes in release 4.2.19, 2005-03-07
939 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
940 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
941 (Savannah bug #12044).
943 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
944 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
945 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
948 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
949 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
951 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
952 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
953 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
954 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
955 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
957 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
959 ** Functionality Changes
960 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
961 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
962 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
964 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
966 ** Documentation enhancements
967 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
969 ** Internationalization and Localization
970 New Vietnamese message translation.
972 * Major changes in release 4.2.18, 2005-02-16
974 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
975 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
976 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
977 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
979 ** Documentation improvements
980 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
982 * Major changes in release 4.2.17, 2005-02-08
984 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
985 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
986 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
987 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
988 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
989 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
992 * Major changes in release 4.2.16, 2005-02-05
993 ** Functionality Changes
994 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
995 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
997 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
998 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
999 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
1002 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
1005 * Major changes in release 4.2.15, 2005-01-29
1006 ** Functionality Changes
1007 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
1008 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
1010 * Major changes in release 4.2.14, 2005-01-25
1011 ** Functionality Changes
1012 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
1014 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
1015 distributed tar file more than once.
1016 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
1017 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
1018 ** Documentation improvements
1019 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
1021 * Major changes in release 4.2.13, 2005-01-23
1022 ** Performance Enhancements
1023 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
1024 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
1025 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
1026 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
1027 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
1029 * Major changes in release 4.2.12, 2005-01-22
1030 ** Functionality Changes
1031 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
1032 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
1033 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
1034 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
1035 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
1036 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
1037 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
1039 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
1040 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
1041 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
1043 * Major changes in release 4.2.11, 2004-12-12
1045 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
1046 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
1047 ** Functionality Changes
1048 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
1049 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
1050 a more helpful error message.
1051 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
1052 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
1053 statistics about the locate databases.
1054 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
1055 ** Documentation improvements
1056 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
1057 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
1059 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
1062 * Major changes in release 4.2.10, 2004-12-06
1064 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
1065 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
1068 * Major changes in release 4.2.9, 2004-12-05
1069 ** Functionality Changes
1070 *** 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_".
1071 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
1072 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
1075 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
1076 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
1077 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
1079 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
1080 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
1081 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
1082 ** Documentation improvements
1083 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
1084 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
1086 * Major changes in release 4.2.8, 2004-11-24
1087 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
1088 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
1091 * Major changes in release 4.2.7, 2004-11-21
1092 ** Functionality Changes
1093 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
1094 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
1095 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
1096 ** Documentation improvements
1097 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
1098 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
1099 are not are explained in this chapter.
1101 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
1103 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
1105 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
1106 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
1108 * Major changes in release 4.2.6, 2004-11-21
1110 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
1111 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
1112 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
1113 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
1116 * Major changes in release 4.2.5, 2004-11-11
1117 ** Functionality Changes
1118 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
1119 find will follow symbolic links.
1120 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
1122 ** Documentation improvements
1123 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
1125 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
1126 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
1127 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
1128 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
1129 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
1130 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
1131 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
1133 * Major changes in release 4.2.4, 2004-11-08
1134 ** Functionality Changes
1135 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
1136 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
1138 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
1139 doesn't support that much).
1140 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
1141 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
1142 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
1143 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
1144 by the use of the -nowarn option.
1145 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
1146 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
1147 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
1148 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
1150 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
1151 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
1152 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
1153 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
1154 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
1155 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
1156 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
1157 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
1158 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
1159 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
1160 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
1162 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1163 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1164 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1165 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1166 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1168 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1170 * Major changes in release 4.2.3, 2004-10-30
1171 ** Functionality Changes
1172 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1173 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1174 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1175 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1176 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1177 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1178 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1179 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1180 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1181 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1182 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1183 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1184 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1185 directory we've just returned out of).
1187 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1189 * Major changes in release 4.2.2, 2004-10-24
1190 ** Documentation improvements
1191 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1193 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1194 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1195 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1197 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1198 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1200 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1201 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1202 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1203 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1205 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1207 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1208 requires it, as explained at
1209 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1211 * Major changes in release 4.2.1, 2004-10-17
1213 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1214 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1215 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1216 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1217 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1219 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1221 * Major changes in release 4.2.0, 2003-06-14
1222 ** Functionality Changes
1223 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1224 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1225 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1226 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1227 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1228 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1229 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1230 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1231 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1232 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1233 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1234 find stats the file. There is also an option
1235 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1236 ** Documentation improvements
1237 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1238 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1239 The find manual page also now includes a section
1240 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1241 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1242 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1243 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1244 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1245 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1247 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1249 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1250 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1251 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1252 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1253 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1254 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1255 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1256 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1257 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1258 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1259 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1260 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1261 database if it fails.
1262 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1263 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1265 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1266 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1268 * Major changes in release 4.1.20, 2003-06-14:
1269 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1270 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1272 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1273 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1274 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1275 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1277 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1279 * Major changes in release 4.1.7, 2001-05-20:
1280 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1281 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1283 * Major changes in release 4.1.6, 2000-10-10:
1284 correct bug in prune.
1285 added --ignore-case option for locate
1287 * Major changes in release 4.1.5, 2000-04-12:
1288 Add support for large files
1290 * Major changes in release 4.1.4, 2000-02-26:
1291 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1293 * Major changes in release 4.1.3, 2000-01-27:
1294 added internationalization and localization.
1296 * Major changes in release 4.1.2, 2000-01-18:
1299 * Major changes in release 4.1.1, 1999-08-8:
1300 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1301 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1303 * Major changes in release 4.1, 1994-11-3:
1305 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1306 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1307 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1308 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1310 * Major changes in release 4.0, 1994-11-2:
1314 *** Man page for updatedb.
1315 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1318 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1319 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1320 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1321 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1322 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1323 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1326 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1327 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1328 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1329 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1330 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1331 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1333 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1336 *** Takes command-line options.
1339 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1340 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1341 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1343 * Major changes in release 3.8, 1993-03-29:
1345 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1346 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1347 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1349 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1351 ** locate can search multiple databases
1352 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1353 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1355 * No NEWS was kept for earlier releases. Known release dates include:
1356 ** release 3.2, 1991-08-28
1357 ** release 3.1, 1991-08-21
1358 ** release 3.0, 1991-08-21
1359 ** release 2.2, 1991-04-05
1360 ** release 2.1, 1991-01-01
1361 ** release 2.0, 1990-11-20
1362 ** release 1.2, 1990-07-03
1363 ** release 1.1, 1990-06-24
1364 ** release 1.0, 1990-06-22
1365 ** beginning of findutils history, 1987-02-21
1368 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1370 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1371 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1372 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1373 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1374 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf