Yes, I think we should fix the description of -L.   Thanks, Andreas.

Incidentally our interpretation of {} is consistent with that in, for example, Solaris:

$ find -L . -ls -print -exec echo {} \;
176544    2 drwxr-xr-x   2 james    other           4 Jun 13 23:56 .
.
.
176545    1 -rw-r--r--   1 james    other           6 Jun 14 00:02 ./b
./b
./b
176545    1 -rw-r--r--   1 james    other           6 Jun 14 00:02 ./a
./a
./a

We're always interested in improving things, so thanks again for reporting
an issue like this.

The implementation of -L is correct - or at least we don't have a proven
example where it wouldn't be -; (only) the search, i.e., the tests, are based
on the file referenced by the file a symbolic link points to.
Or in the words of POSIX:

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/find.html

Cause the file information and file type evaluated for each symbolic link encountered
as a path operand on the command line or encountered during the traversal of a file
hierarchy to be those of the file referenced by the link, and not the link itself.

I'm trying to find the documentation which would make you as a our user
think that -L would let -print or "-exec ... {}' +" use the resolved path name.
Would you point us to such unclear passage, or even better provide a clearer
phrasing as a matter for discussion?

Thanks & have a nice day,
Berny

The information is a bit spread in the documentation.
There is:

‘-print’
‘-fprint’
  [...] is handled in the same way as for the ‘%p’ directive of
  ‘-printf’ and ‘-fprintf’.

and:

%p
  File’s name (not the absolute path name, but the name of the
  file as it was encountered by find - that is, as a relative
  path from one of the starting points).

Is that sufficient?

While find(1) act on the de-referenced file with -L, the called file(1) does not - per default.  GNU find will always pass the original name of the file found, regardless whether -L is in
place or not.  I think you simply want also file(1) to work on
the de-referenced file, so this can easily be done by passing
the -L option to file(1).

  $ find -L ... -exec file -L '{}' +

Have a nice day,
Berny

> So that i didn't do anything with found files and not using {}. But still with -L option it shows me symlink instead of text file.

I don't understand what you are trying to say there.   What part of the output of your script do you think is wrong?   What output did you expect instead?

No, {} always expands to the file being considered, whether or not file properties are examined with stat (find -L) or lstat (find -P).  This mostly makes a difference for the final file name component, since find follows directory symlinks when descending through the file system.

The output I get looks like this:

$ sh sv56410.sh

with -L
  3152508      4 -rw-r--r--   1 youngman primarygroup        5 May 29 11:41 temp2/file
(ends)

without -L
(ends)

with -L ... -exec file
temp2/file: symbolic link to ../temp/file0.txt
(ends)

/tmp/tmp.jbIJfW8mse:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 youngman primarygroup 4096 May 29 11:41 temp
drwxr-xr-x 2 youngman primarygroup 4096 May 29 11:41 temp2

/tmp/tmp.jbIJfW8mse/temp:
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 youngman primarygroup 5 May 29 11:41 file0.txt

/tmp/tmp.jbIJfW8mse/temp2:
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 youngman primarygroup 17 May 29 11:41 file -> ../temp/file0.txt

The -L option affects the way that "find" treats symbolic links.  But it has no effect on the "file" program run by -exec.   {} expands to the file that "find" is currently considering, which is in this case is a symbolic link.   Tests made by find on properties will reflect the properties of the file pointed to by find, but {} will expand to the name of the symbolic link (and not its target).

Here is a shell script which I think demonstrates the point you were trying to make, but without requiring root privileges.

#!/bin/bash

set -u

if ! top="$(mktemp -d)"; then
  echo "Failed to create a temporary directory" >&2
  exit 1
fi

(
set -eCux
cd "${top}"
mkdir temp temp2
echo "test" >| temp/file0.txt
( cd temp2 && ln -s ../temp/file0.txt file )
if wc -c < temp2/file >/dev/null ; then
  exit 1
fi
find -L temp2/ -type f -exec file '{}' \;
)
rv=$?
ls -ltR "${top}"
rm -rf "${top}"
exit $rv

Hello!

I was trying to find files from directory full of symlinks and exec file on them, but wasn't able to do so. Find just show info about symlinks, instead of files they lead to, despite option -L was specified

Here is an example:

root@ubuntu1804x64:~# find --version
find (GNU findutils) 4.7.0-git
Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Eric B. Decker, James Youngman, and Kevin Dalley.
Features enabled: D_TYPE O_NOFOLLOW(enabled) LEAF_OPTIMISATION FTS(FTS_CWDFD) CBO(level=2)
root@ubuntu1804x64:~# mkdir /temp
root@ubuntu1804x64:~# mkdir /temp2
root@ubuntu1804x64:~# echo "test" > /temp/file0.txt
root@ubuntu1804x64:~# ln -s /temp/file0.txt /temp2/file
root@ubuntu1804x64:~# find -L /temp2/ -type f -exec file '{}' \;
/temp2/file: symbolic link to /temp/file0.txt