bugfindutils - Bugs: bug #31005, -exec {} + and -execdir {} + are...

 
 

bug #31005: -exec {} + and -execdir {} + are always true (but documentation does not say so)

Submitter:  Aaron D. Ball <adb>
Submitted:  Thu 09 Sep 2010 10:47:42 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  find Severity:  3 - Normal
Item Group:  Wrong result Status:  Fixed
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  jay
Originator Name:  Open/Closed:  Closed
Release:  4.4.2 Fixed Release:  4.5.13
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Thu 07 Oct 2010 09:34:14 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Yes, the documentation should mention this (and I'm surprised it doesn't already; sorry).

James Youngman <jay>
Group administrator
Thu 09 Sep 2010 10:47:42 PM UTC, original submission:  

A naive user (e.g., I until a few minutes ago) would expect both of these commands

   find -exec false \; -o -print
   find -exec false '{}' \+ -o -print

to print all the files in the directory tree.  Instead, the former prints everything and the latter prints nothing:  i.e., the multi-argument form of "-exec" always returns true.

Since the documentation doesn't say anything about the truth values differing between the two forms of the statement, it seems natural to expect that, if -exec foo {} + invokes

   foo file1 file2 ...

then the truth value at each file used in the invocation would be equal to the truth value of the whole invocation.

After thinking about it a little while, I see that we might need the truth value for file1 before we can decide whether to feed file2 to the command, so there may not be a logical way to fix this.  In any case, the documentation should accurately describe the behavior of the '+' variant of the commands.

(In my own selfish interest, I should point out that the way I'm using this feature would actually work fine if the truth value were always "true" for every file but the last one in a command invocation, which is logically possible to implement.)

Aaron D. Ball <adb>

 

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    Follow 5 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2014-07-16 jay Open/ClosedOpen Closed
        Fixed ReleaseNone 4.5.13
    2013-10-26 jay StatusConfirmed Fixed
    2010-10-07 jay StatusNone Confirmed
    2010-10-07 jay Assigned toNone jay

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