1 GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
2 * Major changes in release 4.3.9-CVS
5 #20263: Compilation fix for DEC Alpha OSF/1 cc, which forbids the
6 ordering comparison of function pointers.
8 #20139: find -[acm]time -N (wrongly) includes files from N days ago,
9 as well as (correctly) from less than N days ago.
11 ** Documentation Fixes
13 Point out more explicitly that the subsecond timestamp support
14 introduced by findutils-4.3.3 introduces a change in the format of
17 Also explain that when reporting a bug, you should check the most
18 recent findutils release first.
20 Introduced doc/find-maint.texi, a maintenance manual for findutils.
23 * Major changes in release 4.3.8
27 #20157: Avoid segfault in locate when run as root. This is caused by
28 a buffer overrun, but at this time no explot mechanism is known.
30 * Major changes in release 4.3.7
34 Locate can now read old-format locate databases generated on machines
35 with a different byte order. It does this by guessing the byte order,
36 so the result is not completely reliable. If you need to share
37 databases between machines of different architectures, you should use
38 the LOCATE02 format (which has other advantages, as explained in the
43 #20014: Findutils-4.3.7 includes a patch for a potential security
44 problem in locate. When locate read an old-format database, it read
45 file names into a fixed-length buffer allocated on the heap without
46 checking for overflow. Although overflowing a heap buffer is often
47 somewhat safer than overflowing a buffer on the stack, this bug still
48 has potential security implications.
50 This bug also affected the following previous findutils releases:
52 - All releases prior to 4.2.31
53 - Findutils 4.3.0 to 4.3.6.
55 This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2007-2452.
59 #20128: Fix compilation error of find/tree.c on AIX with GCC.
61 #20005: Tests -mtime -n and -mtime +n incorrectly treated like -mtime n.
63 #19983: include_next causes compilation failure in findutils 4.3.6 on
66 #19981: Don't call setgroups if the function isn't available. This
67 fixes Savannah bug# 19981.
69 #19980: Don't use the functions putw() or getw() since these are not
70 in current POSIX. Use the gnulib version of wcwidth() where the
71 system does not provide it.
73 #19979: Compilation errors on BeOS
75 #19970: Cannot cast from pointer to bool using gnulib's <stdbool.h>
77 #19967: Use of __attribute((__noreturn__)) makes compilation fail with
78 some non-GCC compilers
80 #19966: find should link against -lm for modf() and fabs()
82 #19965: Compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0; non-declaration of uintmax_t
84 #19948: Assertion failure O_NOFOLLOW != 0 on IRIX 6.5
86 #19871: Typos in find.1
88 #19596: Fixed this bug again, this time in the Texinfo manual (the
89 discussion should compare %b with %s/512, not %s/1024).
91 #19416: _FORTIFY_SOURCE warn_unused_result warnings
93 * Major changes in release 4.3.6
97 #19948: Fixed an assertion failure on IRIX 6.5 (O_NOFOLLOW is defined
100 #19923: Fixed an array overrun in groups[] array of 'locate' when run by
101 or as root. This bug appears not to be exploitable. If locate is not
102 installed setuid, the bug is not exploitable. For setuid
103 installations, it is concievable that there could be an information
104 leak if the user uses the -d option or the -e option, though the
105 maintainer has been unable to provoke this on an x86 system.
107 #19871: Spurious .R directives in manpage produced error messages from
108 GNU troff. This is now fixed (they are corrected to .B).
110 #19416: The result of I/O operations in print-related actions is now
111 checked, and failures are reported. Any failure will cause find's
112 exit status to be nonzero. The predicate itself will continue to
117 A variety of changes were made to allow compilation to succeed on
120 #19983: Now compiles on DEC C V5.9-005 on Digital UNIX V4.0 (or at
123 #19970: Compile correctly on C89 systems where the "_Bool" type is not
124 provided, taking into account the limitations of the gnulib
125 replacement for stdbool.h.
127 #19967: Build successfully with C compilers that don't support the GCC
128 construct __attribute__((__noreturn__)).
130 #19966: Findutils should now build on systems which have the modf()
131 and fabs() functions in the maths library, -lm. This includes some
132 versions of HP-UX and Solaris.
134 #19965: Fixed a compilation failure on OSF/1 4.0 (no definition of the
138 * Major changes in release 4.3.5
140 ** Functional changes
142 Updatedb can now support he generation of file name databases which
143 are compatible with slocate. For some time, GNU locate has been able
146 The /proc filesystem is excluded from the locate database (by
147 default; change PRUNEPATHS to modify this behaviour).
151 #19806: The -samefile predicate might get fooled by inode reuse. We
152 now hold open a file descriptor on the reference file to prevent this.
154 #19768: Better detection of corrupted old-style locate databases
155 (e.g. if the database is too short to include a complete bigram
158 #19766: The frcode and code programs now detect write errors more
161 #19371: Fix compilation failure on systems which #define open to
162 open64 (and similarly with the close system call). This fixes
163 Savannah bug #19371, affecting AIX 5.3.
165 #19658: When cross-compiling, "make clean" no longer deletes the
166 generated file doc/regexprops.texi, because there is no way to
169 #19391: When xargs knows that the system's actual exec limit is larger
170 than the compiled-in ARG_MAX, use the system's limit without
171 generating an assertion failure.
173 #18203: A duplicate report of bug #17478.
175 #17478: Error messages from find can garble the console.
177 #16378: Assertion failure if stat() returns 00000 as the mode
178 of a file. This apparently can happen occasionally with broken NFS
181 #11668: FreeBSD extensions for time specification are now
182 implemented. In fact, these were included in findutils-4.3.3. The
183 change was listed as a functional change (whcih it is) and this bug
184 report was not mentioned.
186 ** Documentation Fixes
188 The locatedb.5 manpage now documents the (default) LOCATE02 format
189 more clearly, and also documents the slocate database format.
191 The maximum and default values applying to the -s option of xargs are
192 now documented more clearly in the manual page.
194 * Major changes in release 4.3.4
198 #19634: Test suite now passes (again) if "." is on your $PATH.
200 #19619: Findutils builds once again on Cygwin.
202 #19617: Nonexistent start points are (once again) diagnosed in
203 ftsfind. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
205 #19616: Fix leaf optimisation and loop detection (which were
206 unreliable in findutils 4.3.3). This bug affected only
209 #19615: find --version no longer claims to be using FTS_CWDFD when it
210 isn't. This bug affected only findutils-4.3.3.
212 #19613: "find -L . -type f" no longer causes an assertion failure when
213 it encounters a symbolic link loop. This bug affected only
216 #19605: Issue an error message (and later return nonzero exit status)
217 if a symbolic link loop was encountered during directory traversal.
219 #19484: bigram.c and code.c fail if the first pathname recorded begins
222 #19483: Inconsistent option highlighting in updatedb manpage
224 #18414: Tests for "find -readable" are skipped for the superuser, as
225 on some systems (e.g. Cygwin with an Administrative user) users can
230 Findutils 4.3.4 includes a translation for the Ukranian language.
233 * Major changes in release 4.3.3
235 Fiundutils-4.3.3 was released on 2007-04-15.
239 #19596: Correct the comparison in the find manpage between %b and %s
240 (the divisor is 512 not 1024).
242 #18714: In the POSIX locale, vertical tabs and form feeds are not
245 #18713: Quoted but empty arguments which occur last on an xargs input
246 line are no longer ignored, but instead produce an empty argument.
248 #18554: Documented the construct -exec sh -c 'foo "$@" bar' {} +
250 #18466: we now avoid this bug by limiting "-execdir ...+"
251 to just one argument for the time being. There is a performance
252 penalty for doing this. We hope to make a better fix in a later
255 #18384: excess bracket in xargs --help
257 #18320: Zero bytes in input should give warning
259 #17437: Corrected the handling of X in symbolic permissions (such
260 as-u+w,a+X). This change actually occurred in findutils-4.3.2, but
261 the NEWS file for that release didn't mention it.
263 #17396: find -mtime -atime -ctime does not support fractional part
264 (see "Functional changes" below)
266 #14748: find -perm /zzz gives wrong result when zzz evaluates to an
269 #14535: correctly support case-folding in locate (that is, "locate
270 -i") for multibyte character environments such as UTF-8. Previously,
271 if your search string contained a character which was outside the
272 single-byte-encoding range for UTF-8 for example, then the
273 case-folding behaviour failed to work and only exact matches would be
278 ** Functional changes
280 The -printf action (and similar related actions) now support %S,
281 which is a measurement of the sparseness of a file.
283 The test "-perm /000" now matches all files instead of no files. For
284 over a year find has been issuing warning messages indicating that
285 this change will happen. We now issue a warning indicating that the
286 change has already happened (in 4.3.x only, there is no plan to make
287 this change in the 4.2.x series).
289 The tests -newer, -anewer, -cnewer, -mtime, -atime, -ctime, -amin,
290 -cmin, -mmin and -used now support sub-second timestamps, including
291 the ability to specify times with non-integer arguments.
293 The -printf format specifiers also support sub-second timestamps:
302 The new test -newerXY supports comparison between status times for
303 files. One of the status times for a file being considered (denoted
304 X) is checked against a reference time (denoted Y) for the file whose
305 name id the argument. X and Y can be:
308 B Birth time (st_birthtime, currently unsupported)
311 t Valid only for the reference time; instead of comparison
312 against a file status time, the argument is a time string.
315 For example, -newermm is equivalent to -newer, and -neweram is true if
316 the file being considered was accessed more recently than the
317 reference file was modified. The -newerXY test supports subsecond
318 timestamps where these are available. The X=B variant is not yet
321 If you configure the sourec code and then run the tests with "make
322 check", the test suite fails rather than defaulting to testing the
326 * Major changes in release 4.3.2
330 #18222: find -printf '%H %P' once again prints the right result if
331 more than one start point was given on the command line.
333 #17782: find -execdir now correctly puts the prefix "./" before the
334 expansion of "{}" rather than at the start of the argument it appears
335 in. Please note that if you use the -exec or -execdir actions with a
336 shell, then you may be vulnerable to shell code injection attacks, so
337 don't do that. It's not a security defect in find - you should not be
338 passing untrusted data (such as file names chosen by other people) to
341 #17490: find -regex generated a segfault in findutils-4.3.1, but this
342 is fixed in findutils-4.3.2.
344 #17477: find -printf '%' (that is, where the format has a trailing %)
345 now generates an error message.
347 #17372: The fts-based find executable (the default configuration uses
348 fts) is now much faster when -maxdepth is used on filesystems with
351 #15531: The -prune action now behaves correctly when applied to a file.
353 ** Functional changes
355 The slocate database format is now supported. Preliminary changes
356 intended to eventually allow setuid operation of locate have also been
357 made. For the moment, please don't install GNU locate as a
358 set-user-ID program (except for testing purposes; if you do so, please
359 make sure that untrusted users cannot execute the set-user-ID locate
362 Use of an slocate database which was built with a nonzero security
363 mode (at the moment, GNU updatedb will not do this) forces locate's
364 "-e" option to be turned on, which has an effect on the "-S" option
365 which is probably surprising for most users.
368 ** Documentation Fixes
370 The global effect of options (other than -daystart and -follow) is now
371 explained more clearly in the manual page. Savannah bug #15360.
374 * Major changes in release 4.3.1
378 Find now follows POSIX rules for determining where directories end and
379 expressions start. This means that "find \(1 \!2 \, \)" now searches
380 in the four named directories, rather than trying to parse an
381 expression. (Savannah bug #15235).
383 You now get a more helpful error message when you use command lines
384 which have missing expressions, such as
391 Savannah bug #15800: If find finds more subdirectories within a parent
392 directory than it previously expected to based on the link count of
393 the parent, the resulting error message now gives the correct
394 directory name (previously an error message was issued but it
395 specified the wrong directory).
397 Savannah bug #16738: "find .... -exec ... {} +" now works if you have
398 a large environment and many files must be passed to the -exec
399 action. The same problem affected the -execdir action, though since
400 the number of files in a given directory will normally be smaller, the
401 problem was worse for -exec.
403 Savannah bug #16579: Updatedb now works if it is running as a user
404 whose login shell is not actually a shell.
406 There have also been a number of documentation improvements (includng
407 Savannah bug #16269).
409 ** Functional changes
411 For find, debug output can now be enabled at runtime with the -D
412 option. This causes the printing of various sorts of information
413 about find's internal state and progress.
415 The find option -nowarn cannot itself produce a warning (this used to
416 happen with commands like "find . -name quux -nowarn -print").
418 ** Performance Enhancements
420 Find now has a rudimentary cost-based optimiser. It has an idea of
421 the basic cost of each test (i.e. that -name is very cheap while -size
422 is more expensive). It re-orders tests bearing in mind the cost of
423 each test and its likely success. Predicates with side effects (for
424 example -delete or -exec) are not reordered. The optimiser is not
425 yet enabled by default, but the new option -O controls the query
426 optimisation level. To see this in action, try
427 find -D opt -O3 . -type f -o -type c -o -size 555 -name Z
428 and compare the optimised query with:
429 find -D opt -O3 . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
431 find -D opt . -size 555 -o -type c -o -type f -name Z
433 Over time, as optimisations are proven to be robust and correct, they
434 will be moved to lower optimisation levels. Some optimisations have
435 always been performed by find (for example -name is always done early
440 Findutils 4.3.1 includes updated translations for the following
442 Vietnamese, Belarusian, Catalan, Danish, German, Greek, Esperanto,
443 Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Irish, Galician, Croatian, Hungarian,
444 Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Luganda, Malay, Dutch, Polish,
445 Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda,
446 Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (simplified),
447 Chinese (traditional), Bulgarian
449 * Major changes in release 4.3.0
451 The 4.3.x release series are currently 'development' releases. Please
452 test it, but think carefully before installing it in a production
453 system. New features in findutils-4.3.x are under development; they
454 may change or go away.
456 All changes up to and including findutils-4.2.27 are included in this
457 release. In addition the following changes are new in this release:
459 ** Functional Changes
461 By default, find now uses the fts() function to search the file
462 system. The use of fts greatly increases find's ability to search
463 extremely deep directory hierarchites.
465 You can tell that the version of find you are using uses FTS, because
466 the output of "find --version" will include the word "FTS".
468 Currently two binaries for 'find' are built. The configure option
469 --without-fts can be used to select whether 'find' uses fts:
472 default configuration find oldfind
473 configure --with-fts find oldfind
474 configure --without-fts ftsfind find
476 New tests, -readable, -writable, -executable. These check that a file
477 can be read, written or executed respectively.
479 * Major changes in release 4.2.27
481 ** Warnings of Future Changes
483 The test -perm /000 currently matches no files, but for greater
484 consistency with -perm -000, this will be changed to match all files;
485 this change will probably be made in early 2006. Meanwhile, a warning
486 message is given if you do this.
490 If xargs is invoked with many short arguments on PPC systems running
491 the Linux kernel, we no longer get an "argument list too long" error
492 from the operating system.
494 Fixed a bug in the test suite which caused it to spuriously fail on
495 systems where ARG_MAX is different to the value used by the Linux
496 kernel on 32-bit x86-architecture systems.
498 On systems running the Linux kernel, "find -printf %F" no longer
499 produces the wrong answer for files on filesystems that have been
500 remounted elsewhere using "mount --bind". (Savannah bug #14921).
502 ** Documentation Changes
504 Following some extensive and detailed review comments from Aaron
505 Hawley, the material in the manual pages and the Texinfo manual are
508 The %M format specifier of "find -printf" is now documented, although
509 it has existed since release 4.2.5.
511 The 'find' manual page now correctly documents the fact that -regex
512 defaults to using Emacs-style regular expressions (though this can be
515 * Major changes in release 4.2.26
517 ** Public Service Announcements
519 I'd like to point out a second time that the interpretation of '-perm
520 +mode' has changed to be more POSIX-compliant. If you want the old
521 behaviour of the GNU extension you should use '-perm /mode'. See the
522 NEWS entry for findutils version 4.2.21 for details.
524 ** Functional Changes
526 The xargs command now supports a new option (--delimiter) which allows
527 input items to be separated by characters other than null and
528 whitespace. This resolves Savannah support request sr #102914.
530 Sometimes find needs to read the /etc/mtab file (or perform the
531 equivalent operation on systems not using /etc/mtab). If this
532 information is needed but not available, find now exits with an error
533 message non-zero status. If the information is not needed, find will
536 A new xargs option --delimiter allows the input delimiter to be
537 changed (previously \0 was the only choice unless you use the -L
538 option, which changes other semantics too).
542 If the environment size is too large to allow xargs to operate
543 normally, 'xargs --help' still works (now).
545 If the input to xargs is a large number of very short options (for
546 example, one character each), earlier versions of xargs would fail
547 with 'Argument list too long'. However, since this is precisely the
548 problem that xargs was invented to solve, this is a bug. Hence on
549 those systems we now correctly use a shorter command line. This
550 problem particularly affected 64-bit Linux systems because of the
551 larger size of pointers, although 32-bit Linux systems were also
552 affected (albeit for longer command lines). In theory the same
553 problem could affect 'find -exec {} +', but that's much less likely
554 (even so, the bug is fixed there too).
556 Bugfix for an unusual failure mode (Savannah bug #14842) where an
557 attempt to allocate more space for directory contents succeeds but is
558 incorrectly diagnosed as a failure. The likelihood of you
559 experiencing this depends on your architecture, operating system and
560 resource limits. This failure has been observed in a directory
561 containing 35396 entries.
563 ** Documentation Changes
565 The EXAMPLES section of the find manual page now correctly describes
566 the symbolic and octal modes for the -perm test.
568 The documentation and "--help" usage information for the -L, -l, -I
569 and -i options have been clarified (but the behaviour has not changed).
571 The documentation now explains more clearly what happens when you use
574 * Major changes in release 4.2.25
578 find -perm /440 (which should succeed if a file is readable by its
579 owner or group) now works. Previously there was a bug which caused
580 this to be treated as "find -perm 440".
582 Some files in the xargs test suite have been renamed to avoid problems
583 on operating systems whoch cannot distinguish filenames on the basis
584 of upper/lower case distinctions.
586 The software now builds on Cygwin, including the generated file
589 Findutils should now build once again on systems supporting AFS, but
590 this support has not recently been fully tested. Findutils should
591 also (once again) build on Cygwin.
595 The test suite for find is now much more extensive.
597 * Major changes in release 4.2.24
599 ** Documentation Changes
601 The manual now includes a "Worked Examples" section which talks about
602 the various ways in which findutils can be used to perform common
603 tasks, and why some of these alternatives are better than others.
605 The -I option of xargs (which is required by the POSIX standard) is
608 We now document the fact that find ensures that commands run by -ok
609 and -okdir don't steal find's input. Find does this by redirecting
610 the command's standard input from stdin.
612 Many documentation readability enhancements and proofreading fixes
613 were contributed by Aaron Hawley.
615 ** Functional Changes
617 *** Functional changes in locate
619 The "--regex" option of locate now assumes the regular expression to
620 be in the same syntax as is used in GNU Emacs, though this can be
621 changed with the new option --regextype. This is a change from the
622 existing behaviour (which was to use POSIX Basic Regular Expressions).
623 Since this feature is releatively new anyway, I though it was more
624 useful to have compatibility between regular expression handling in
625 find and locate than to maintain the short-lived previous behaviour of
628 The locate program now also supports a "--regextype" long option which
629 controls which regular expression syntax is understood by locate.
630 This is a long option and has no single-letter 'short option'
633 *** Functional changes in find
635 The regular expression syntax understood by "find" can be changed with
636 the -regextype option; this option is positional, meaning that you can
637 have several tests, each using a distinct syntax (this is not
638 recommended practice however).
640 The default regular expression syntax is substantially the same as
641 that recognised by GNU Emacs, except for the fact that "." will match
644 The leaf optimisation can be disabled with the configure option
645 "--disable-leaf-optimisation", which is equivalent to specifying
646 "-noleaf" on all find command lines. This is useful for systems
647 having filesystems which do not provide traditional Unix behaviour for
648 the link count on directories (for example Cygwin and the Solaris 9
649 HSFS implementation).
653 *** Bug Fixes for find
655 The -iregex test now works once again on systems that lack
656 re_search() (that is, systems on which findutils needs to use the
657 gnulib version of this function).
659 find -regex now once again uses GNU Emacs-compatible regular
662 If invoked with stderr closed, the -fprint and -fprintf actions now no
663 longer cause error messages to be sent into the output file.
665 If the link count of a directory is less that two, the leaf
666 optimisation is now disabled for that directory. This should allow
667 searching of non-Unix filesystems to be more reliable on systems that
668 don't take the trouble to make their filesystems look like traditional
669 Unix filesystems. Some filesystems don't even take the trouble to
670 have a link count of less than two and for these, -noleaf is still
671 required unless --disable-leaf-optimisation was used at configure time.
673 The "%Y" directive for the -printf action now no longer changes find's
674 idea of the mode of the file, so this means among other things that
675 "-printf %Y %y" now works properly. This is Savannah bug #13973.
677 * Major changes in release 4.2.23
679 ** Documentation Changes
681 The -L and -I options of xargs are currently incompatible (but should
684 Improved the documentation for -execdir and -okdir.
686 ** Functional Changes to updatedb
688 File names ending in "/" which are specified as an argument to
689 --prunepaths (or in $PRUNEPATHS) don't work, so we now issue an error
690 message if the user tries to do that. The obvious exception of course
691 is "/" which does work and is not rejected.
694 * Major changes in release 4.2.22
698 If a directory entry searched with "find -L" is a symbolic link to
699 ".", we no longer loop indefinitely. This problem affected find
700 versions 4.2.19, 4.2.20 and 4.2.21. This problem allows users to make
701 "find" loop indefinitely. This is in effect a denial of service and
702 could be used to prevent updates to the locate database or to defeat
703 file security checks based on find. However, it should be noted that
704 you should not use "find -L" in security-sensitive scenarios.
708 None in this release.
710 ** Functional Changes to locate
712 A locate database can now be supplied on stdin, using '-' as a element
713 of the database-path. If more than one database-path element is '-',
714 later instances are ignored.
716 A new option to locate, '--all' ('-A') causes matches to be limited to
717 entries which match all given patterns, not entries which match
718 one or more patterns.
720 ** Documentation Changes
722 Some typos in the manual pages have been fixed. Various parts of the
723 manual now point out that it is good practice to quote the argument of
724 "-name". The manpage now has a "NON-BUGS" section which explains some
725 symptoms that look like bugs but aren't. The explanations of the "%k"
726 and "%b" directives to "find -printf" have been imrpoved.
729 * Major changes in release 4.2.21
730 ** Functional Changes to find
732 The GNU extension "find ... -perm +MODE" has been withdrawn because it
733 is incompatible with POSIX in obscure cases like "find ... -perm ++r".
734 Use the new syntax "find ... -perm /MODE" instead. Old usages will
735 still continue to work, so long as they don't conflict with POSIX.
737 If the output is going to a terminal, the -print, -fprint, -printf and
738 -fprintf actions now quote "unusual" characters to prevent unwanted
739 effects on the terminal. See "Unusual Characters in File Names" for
740 further details. There is no change to the behaviour when the output
741 is not going to a terminal. The locate program does the same thing,
742 unless the -0 option is in effect (in which case the filenames are
745 ** Functional Changes to locate
747 The locate command will now read each locate database at most once.
748 This means that if you are using multiple databases and are searching
749 for more than one name, the results will now be printed in a different
750 order (and if you specified a small limit with --limit, you may get a
751 different set of results).
753 A new option '--print' for locate causes it to print the matching
754 results even if the '--count' or '--statistics' option is in effect.
757 find /blah/blah/blah -depth -empty now works once again.
759 The -regex and -iregex tests of find now correctly accept POSIX Basic
760 Regular Expressions. (Savannah bug #12999)
762 The updatedb program now works on systems where "su" does not support
763 the "-s" option, for example Solaris.
765 * Major changes in release 4.2.20
766 ** Internationalization and Localization
767 Updated Vietnamese and Dutch translations.
770 Minor bugfix affecting only those who compile from the CVS repository,
771 as opposed to those who compile from the source releases.
773 * Major changes in release 4.2.19
776 find should now no longer hang on systems which lack the O_NOFOLLOW
777 flag to open(2) and which are clients of an unresponsive NFS server
778 (Savannah bug #12044).
780 We now avoid inappropriately failing for "find -L foo" or "find -H
781 foo" if foo is a symbolic link (Savannah bug #12181). Previously we
782 used to fail with the error message "Too many levels of symbolic
785 "find . -false -exec foo {} +" no longer runs an extra instance of foo
786 when find exits (Savannah bug #12230).
788 If the chdir() safety check fails but we can no longer get back to
789 where we started, exit with an explanatory (fatal) error message.
790 This does not happen on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD because the safety check
791 is not needed (the security problem the safety check protects against
792 is prevented in a cleaner way on those systems).
794 "make distclean" no longer deletes regex.c (which "make all" needs).
796 ** Functionality Changes
797 "find -printf "%h\n" will now print "." for files in the current directory.
798 Previously it printed nothing (but there was a bug in the %h
799 implementation anyway). This fixes Savannah bug #12085.
801 Should now build (again) on non-C99-compliant systems.
803 ** Documentation enhancements
804 Fixed some typos and clarified wording in "Working with automounters".
806 ** Internationalization and Localization
807 New Vietnamese message translation.
809 * Major changes in release 4.2.18
811 *** "find -depth" was missing out non-leaf directories when they contain
812 non-directories. This affected findutils releases 4.2.15,
813 4.2.16 and 4.2.17, but the bug is now fixed.
814 *** Find no longer hangs on systems which are clients of unresponsive
816 ** Documentation improvements
817 *** Improvements and corrections to the find.1 manpage, including corrections to the descriptions of -H and -L.
819 * Major changes in release 4.2.17
821 *** bug #11861 undefined symbol "basename" on IRIX 5.3
822 *** bug #11865 xargs -i regression (as compared to findutils-4.2.12)
823 *** bug #11866 Typo in pred_okdir renders it useless (affecting 4.2.16 only)
824 *** patch #3723 fix recent process_top_path change (for -execdir on /)
825 *** Fixing bug #11866 and applying patch #3723 made -execdir work much better.
826 *** find bar/baz/ugh now works again if baz is a symbolic link (broken
829 * Major changes in release 4.2.16
830 ** Functionality Changes
831 *** Updated the message catalogues for the translated messages.
832 *** The subfs filesystem is now treated the same as the autofs
834 *** New translations: Belarusian, Catalan, Greek, Esperanto,
835 Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Japanese, Luganda,
836 Malay, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian, Chinese (simplified).
839 *** The -execdir action now works correctly for files named on the
842 * Major changes in release 4.2.15
843 ** Functionality Changes
844 *** locate now supports matching regular expression (--regex).
845 *** --enable-d_type-optimization (introduced in findutils 4.2.13) is now turned on by default.
847 * Major changes in release 4.2.14
848 ** Functionality Changes
849 *** New options -L, -P, -H for locate. The work in the same was as the same options for find.
851 *** Don't include the "findutils/find/testsuite/find.gnu" subdirectory in the
852 distributed tar file more than once.
853 *** Should now build on Solaris once again.
854 *** -xtype and -printf %Y now work correctly for symbolic links once again
855 ** Documentation improvements
856 *** All options for "locate" are now documented
858 * Major changes in release 4.2.13
859 ** Performance Enhancements
860 *** On Linux and some other systems, a large performance improvement,
861 because we can eliminate many of the calls to lstat() (in extreme
862 cases, 99% of them). Limited testing shows a 2x speedup on NFS
863 filesystems. Other systems which can make use of this enhancement
864 include Mac OS X and *BSD.
866 * Major changes in release 4.2.12
867 ** Functionality Changes
868 *** find is now POSIX-compliant, as far as I know.
869 *** -exec ... {} + now works.
870 *** New actions -execdir and -okdir which are like -exec and -ok but more secure.
871 *** "locate -w" is now a synonym for "locate --wholepath".
872 *** An empty path entry in the locate database path (for example "::" in
873 $LOCATE_PATH or in the argument to "locate -d") is taken to mean
874 the default database, whose name is hard-coded in locate.
876 *** If find or xargs cannot write to stdout, for example because
877 output is redirected to a file and the disk is full, the
878 relevant program will return a non-zero exit status.
880 * Major changes in release 4.2.11
882 *** Compilation fix for systems without EOVERFLOW.
883 *** More helpful error message if you make a mistake with (, ), -o or -a.
884 ** Functionality Changes
885 *** If you have unclosed parentheses on the find command line,
886 or any of a number of similar problems, find will now produce
887 a more helpful error message.
888 *** locate -b is now a synonym for locate --basename
889 *** locate now supports a --statistics (or -S) option, which prints some
890 statistics about the locate databases.
891 *** Implemented the -samefile option.
892 ** Documentation improvements
893 *** New chapter in the manual, "Security Considerations".
894 *** Better documentation for -prune (Mainly thanks to Stepan Kasal)
896 *** locate's options -i and -w now work with the -e option (previously a bug
899 * Major changes in release 4.2.10
901 *** Portability fix for fstype.c: should now compile on UNICOS, and possibly
902 also produce useful results on BeOS and Dolphin, perhaps other
905 * Major changes in release 4.2.9
906 ** Functionality Changes
907 *** 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_".
908 *** xargs now supports the POSIX options -E, -I and -L. These are synonyms
909 for the existing options -e, -i and -l, but the latter three are
912 *** xargs -n NUM now invokes a command as soon as it has NUM arguments.
913 Previously, it waited until NUM+1 items had been read, and then
914 invoked the command with NUM arguments, saving the remaining one
916 *** If "find -L" discovers a symbolic link loop, an error message is issued.
917 *** If you specify a directory on the find command line, but -prune
918 is applied to it, find will no longer chdir() into it anyway.
919 ** Documentation improvements
920 *** The precise interpretation of the arguments to the -atime, -ctime
921 and similar tests in find has been documented more clearly.
923 * Major changes in release 4.2.8
924 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.7 automount handling on Solaris. This
925 worked to some extent in findutils-4.2.7, but is much improved in
928 * Major changes in release 4.2.7
929 ** Functionality Changes
930 *** xargs can now read a list of arguments from a named file, allowing
931 the invoked program to use the same stdin as xargs started with
932 (for example ``xargs --arg-file=todo emacs'').
933 ** Documentation improvements
934 *** The Texinfo manual now has an extra chapter, "Error Messages". Most
935 error messages are self-explanatory, but some of the ones which
936 are not are explained in this chapter.
938 *** Avoid trying to link against -lsun on UNICOS, which doesn't need it or
940 *** Bugfix to the findutils 4.2.6 automount handling (which hadn't been enabled
942 *** Reenabled internationalisation support (which had been accidentally
943 disabled in findutils-4.2.5).
945 * Major changes in release 4.2.6
947 *** find now copes rather better when a directory appears to change just as
948 it is about to start examining it, which happens with automount.
949 This is because automount mounts filesystems as you change
950 directory into them. This should resolve Savannah bugs #3998,
953 * Major changes in release 4.2.5
954 ** Functionality Changes
955 *** The POSIX options -H and -L are supported. These control whether or not
956 find will follow symbolic links.
957 *** The BSD option -P is also now supported (though in any case
959 ** Documentation improvements
960 *** Better documentation for "xargs -i".
962 *** "make install" now respects DESTDIR when generating localstatedir.
963 (this is only relevant if you are installing to some location
964 other than the one that you indictaed when you ran "configure").
965 *** Compatible with automake versions 1.8 and 1.9.
966 *** Build problems on UNICOS now fixed, though the linker will still generate
967 warnings because we try to link with the nonexistent library
968 "-lsun". Edit $(LIBS) to work around this problem.
970 * Major changes in release 4.2.4
971 ** Functionality Changes
972 *** If your system sort command has a working "-z" option, updatedb will
973 now correctly handle newline characters in filenames (as will
975 *** xargs now uses 128Kb of command line by default (less if the system
976 doesn't support that much).
977 *** If you specify a 'find' option after non-option, a warning message
978 is now issued. Options should be specified immediately after the
979 list of paths to search. These warnings are enabled if you
980 specify the -warn option, or if stdin is a tty. They are diabled
981 by the use of the -nowarn option.
982 *** Like find, the locate program now supports an option --null (short form -0)
983 which changes the result separator from newline to NULL.
984 *** Locate supports the option -c (long form --count) which suppresses normal
985 output but prints on stdout the number of results produced (like
987 *** Locate supports the option -l (long form --limit) which limits the
988 number of results. This is useful if you only want to find out if
989 there are copies of a certain file on the system, but don't want
990 to wait for the entire locate database to be searched.
991 *** Locate now has an option --basename which forces the specified pattern to
992 be matched against the basename of the entries in the locate
993 database, rather than the whole name. The default behaviour
994 (matching against the whole name of the file including all the
995 parent directory names) corresponds to the option --wholename.
996 *** updatedb has a new option, --findoptions, that can be used to
997 pass extra options through to the find command that it uses.
999 *** "find -printf '%H\n'" now works (rather than segfaulting) on
1000 systems that have non-writable string constants.
1001 *** Better POSIX compliance for the -s option to xargs (out of range
1002 values should just result in bounding to the correct range, not an
1003 error, so now we just print a warning message and adjust the
1005 *** Corrected section numbers of manual page cross-references
1007 * Major changes in release 4.2.3
1008 ** Functionality Changes
1009 *** Added new action -delete which deletes things that find matches.
1010 *** Added new action -quit which causes find to exit immediately.
1011 *** A new format directive '%D' for "find -printf" prints the device number.
1012 *** The -ls predicate no longer truncates user or group names.
1013 *** Added new option "-d" which is a synonym for "-depth" for compatibility
1014 with Mac OS, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. This option is already
1015 deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies "-depth".
1016 *** Added two new format specifiers to the -printf action; these are
1017 %y and %Y. They indicate the type of the file as a single letter;
1018 these are the same latters as are used by the "-type" test.
1019 *** If a parent directory changes during the execution of find,
1020 the error message we issue identifies the nature of the change
1021 (for example the previous and current inode numbers of the
1022 directory we've just returned out of).
1024 *** Non-functional code changes to silence compiler warnings.
1026 * Major changes in release 4.2.2
1027 ** Documentation improvements
1028 *** "find ... -exec {}+" is not yet supported.
1030 *** Fixed compilation problems on Solaris, RedHat EL AS 2.1, Irix, AIX
1031 *** Work around possible compiler bug on HP-UX 11.23 for ia64
1032 *** The built-in internationalisation support now works again.
1034 *** We now import the gnulib source in the way it is intended to be used,
1035 which means among other things that we only have one config.h file
1037 *** Functions which findutils requires but which are not present in
1038 gnulib are now defined in "libfind.a". This is in the lib
1039 directory, while gnulib is in the gnulib subdirectory.
1040 *** Fixed a typo in the address of the FSF in many of the file headers.
1042 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
1044 *** 'find -name \*bar now matches .foobar, because the POSIX standard
1045 requires it, as explained at
1046 http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/interp/1003-2-92_int/pasc-1003.2-126.html
1048 * Major changes in release 4.2.1
1050 *** find -iname now works correctly on systems that have an fnmatch() function
1051 that does not support FNM_CASEFOLD
1052 *** updatedb now uses signal names for "trap" instead of numbers,
1053 as per bug #9465 (see http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html)
1054 *** Better support for systems lacking intmax_t
1056 **** findutils now uses a newer version of gnulib (dated 2004-10-17).
1058 * Major changes in release 4.2.0
1059 ** Functionality Changes
1060 *** xargs now works better when the environment variables are very extensive.
1061 The xargs command used to run into difficulties if the environment
1062 data contained more than 20480 bytes.
1063 *** New options -wholename and -iwholename
1064 As per the GNU Projecvt coding standard, These are preferred over
1065 the -path and -ipath options. Using -ipath now generates a warning,
1066 though -path does not (since HPUX also offers -path).
1067 *** The environment variable FIND_BLOCK_SIZE is now ignored.
1068 *** New option "-ignore_readdir_race"
1069 silences an error messages which would otherwise occur if a file is removed
1070 after find has read it from the directory using readdir(), but before
1071 find stats the file. There is also an option
1072 -noignore_readdir_race which has the opposite effect.
1073 ** Documentation improvements
1074 *** The -size option of find is now documented in more detail
1075 *** POSIX compliance and GNU extensions
1076 The find manual page also now includes a section
1077 which describes the relationship between the features of GNU
1078 find and the POSIX standard. Some other small improvements
1079 to the find and xargs manual pages have been made.
1080 *** The argument to the -fprintf directive is now better documented.
1081 The escape code '\0' for the `-printf' predicate of find is now
1082 documented, and the documentation for the %k and %b specifiers
1084 *** xargs -i is now more clearly documented.
1086 *** locate 'pa*d' will now find /etc/passwd (if it exists, of course)
1087 *** xargs standard input is not inherited by child processes
1088 If the command invoked by xargs reads from its standard input,
1089 it now gets nothing, as opposed to stealing data from the
1090 list of files that xargs is trying to read.
1091 *** Better support for 64-bit systems.
1092 *** The command "xargs -i -n1" now works as one might expect,
1093 I think this is a strange thing to want to do.
1094 *** Arguments to find -mtime that are too large are now diagnosed
1095 Previously, this just used to cause find just to do the wrong thing.
1096 *** updatedb is now somewhat more robust
1097 The updatedb shell script now does not generate an empty
1098 database if it fails.
1099 *** Sanity-check on some data read from locatedb
1100 Locate now detects some types of file corruption in the
1102 *** The %k format specifier for -fprintf now works
1103 This was broken in 4.1.20.
1105 * Major changes in release 4.1.20:
1106 ** New maintainer, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
1107 ** As far as I know, this is the first release after 4.1.7, but I've left
1109 ** We now use an "imported" version of gnulib, rather than including
1110 a copy of the gnulib code in our CVS repository. There are no
1111 differences in the build instructions, though (unless you are
1112 building directly from CVS, in which case please read the file
1114 ** There are no (deliberate) functional changes in version 4.1.20.
1116 * Major changes in release 4.1.7:
1117 fix problem so that default "-print" is added when "-prune" is used.
1118 security fixes related to directories changing while find is executing.
1120 * Major changes in release 4.1.6:
1121 correct bug in prune.
1122 added --ignore-case option for locate
1124 * Major changes in release 4.1.5:
1125 Add support for large files
1127 * Major changes in release 4.1.4:
1128 bug fixes, more up-to-date languages.
1130 * Major changes in release 4.1.3:
1131 added internationalization and localization.
1133 * Major changes in release 4.1.1:
1134 attempt at successful compilation on many platforms after years of neglect
1135 "--existing" option added to locate "--prunefs" option added to updatedb
1137 * Major changes in release 4.1:
1139 ** Distribution renamed to findutils.
1140 ** updatedb is now a user command, installed in $exec_prefix/bin
1141 instead of $exec_prefix/libexec.
1142 ** A few problems in Makefiles and testsuite corrected.
1144 * Major changes in release 4.0:
1148 *** Man page for updatedb.
1149 *** Man page for the locate database formats.
1152 *** Takes less CPU time on long paths, because it uses chdir to descend
1153 trees, so it does fewer inode lookups.
1154 *** Does not get trapped in symbolic link loops when -follow is given.
1155 *** Supports "-fstype afs" if you have /afs and /usr/afsws/include
1156 and you configure using the --with-afs option.
1157 *** New action -fls FILE; like -ls but writes to FILE.
1160 *** Supports a new database format, which is 8-bit clean and
1161 allows machines with different byte orderings and integer sizes to
1162 share the databases. The new locate can also detect and read the
1163 old database format automatically. The new databases are typically
1164 30% or more larger than the old ones (due to allowing all 8 bits in
1165 file names). Search times are approximately the same, or faster on
1167 *** Warns if a file name database is more than 8 days old.
1170 *** Takes command-line options.
1173 *** Performance improved 10-20%.
1174 *** The EOF string is not used when -0 is given.
1175 *** Now has a test suite. Some minor bugs fixed as a result.
1177 * Major changes in release 3.8:
1179 ** case insensitive versions of -lname, -name, -path, -regex:
1180 -ilname, -iname, -ipath, -iregex
1181 ** %F directive for -printf, -fprintf to print file system type
1183 * Major changes in release 3.7:
1185 ** locate can search multiple databases
1186 ** locate has an option to specify the database path
1187 ** updatedb no longer goes into an infinite loop with some versions of tail
1190 This is used by Emacs' spell checker ispell.el:
1192 LocalWords: ansi knr strftime xargs updatedb sh fnmatch hin strcpy
1193 LocalWords: lib getstr getline frcode bigram texi depcomp automake
1194 LocalWords: strncasecmp strcasecmp LIBOBJS FUNC prunefs allout libexec
1195 LocalWords: testsuite Texinfo chdir inode fstype afs fls ls EOF lname
1196 LocalWords: regex ilname iname ipath iregex printf fprintf