bugfindutils - Bugs: bug #22832, Problems with "find...

 
 

bug #22832: Problems with "find --help" doc and with "find" functionality

Submitter:  None
Submitted:  Fri 04 Apr 2008 04:06:14 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  None Severity:  3 - Normal
Item Group:  None Status:  Invalid
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  jay
Originator Name:  David Zethmayr Originator Email:  -email is unavailable-
Open/Closed:  Closed Release:  4.2.27
Fixed Release:  None
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Sat 05 Apr 2008 10:12:49 AM UTC, comment #2: 

This isn't a bug report, so I'm closing it.  

If you are unsure of some aspct of the behaviour of findutils and your question is not answered in the documentation (i.e. neither in the Info documentation nor in the manual page), then that is a bug in the documentation.  In that circumstance please generate a fresh bug report.

James Youngman <jay>
Group administrator
Sat 05 Apr 2008 10:05:46 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Unix tools have never used the "tool ?" syntax, since it's essentially inconvenient; "?" is a shell wildcard:

$ echo ?
c X

To pass a literal ? reliably to a program, it would need to be escaped:

$ echo '?' ; echo \?
?
?

The fact that the shell expands wildcards and that thus invoked programs never see the wildcard is an important fact about the Unix command line, and understanding it is key to becoming an effective Unix user. 

You are right that "find --help" does not teach you how to use the find program.  For that, you should read the online info documentation with "info find".    In between there is the manual page, which is a reference but not a tutorial.  

Almost all programs on Unix like systems have a manual page.  To get started with using the online manual type "man intro".  To browse the Texinfo online tutorial information just type "info".       The "info find" command takes you directly to the findutils manual.



<< Then comes a kick in the face.  "find" ignores the
 old Unix principle "no news is good news" (where if
 you want to see incidental information you give a
 "verbose" switch) and vomits out every path it
 searches onto the screen. Yucch. >>

That's not what is happening.  The find program prints all the files which match the criteria you specified.  If you specify no criteria with which to narrow down the search, then all files will match your criteria and are therefore printed for you.

<< My pwd is /home/dz/ and I say find /home/dz/ foo.bar
 All the paths in /home/dz/ vomit to the screen, but
    find: foo.bar: No such file or directory >>

You've misunderstood how find works, though.  Please read the documentation.

James Youngman <jay>
Group administrator
Fri 04 Apr 2008 04:06:14 PM UTC, original submission:  


 Problems with  "find --help" doc and with "find" functionality.

 Using Red Hat 2.6.18-53.1.14.el5,
 bash

Anonymous

 

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Attached Files
file #15404:  problems-in-find.txt added by None (3KiB - text/plain - putative bug and remarks on help doc)

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

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  • -email is unavailable- added by jay (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by None (Submitted the item)
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    Follow 4 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2008-04-05 jay StatusNone Invalid
        Assigned toNone jay
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2008-04-04 None Attached File- Added problems-in-find.txt, #15404

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