On 2017-04-01 "Dale R. Worley" <wor...@alum.mit.edu> wrote: > I was looking at an old sandbox I have that contains some partially-made > changes to the documentation of -atime and related predicates.
> In find.texi is: > @deffn Test -atime [+|-]n > @deffnx Test -ctime [+|-]n > @deffnx Test -mtime [+|-]n > True if the file was last accessed (or its status changed, or it was > modified) (exactly/more than/less than) n' > @var{n}*24 hours ago. The number of 24-hour periods since > the file's timestamp is always rounded down; therefore 0 means ``less > than 24 hours ago'', 1 means ``between 24 and 48 hours ago'', and so > forth. Fractional values are supported but this only really makes > sense for the case where ranges (@samp{+@var{n}} and @samp{-@var{n}}) > are used. > @end deffn [...] > My question is the measning of "Fractional values are supported but this > only really makes sense for the case where ranges (@samp{+@var{n}} and > @samp{-@var{n}}) are used." What is the "vlaue" that it is > talking about, is it the "n" in the predicate or the "number of 24-hour > periods since ..."? The meaning seems to be the former (since the > latter would contradict how the atime value is computed), but the usage > of fractional "n" would not seem to be very useful, since a fractional > "n" could always be replaced with an integral "n" with the same effect. Try it out. ;-) Starting with a directory of files with mtime x hours + a couple of minutes ago (x=1..48) and named as such: ametzler@argenau:/tmp/FFF$ find -mtime -0.5 -type f | sort ./01.hours-ago ./02.hours-ago [...] ./10.hours-ago ./11.hours-ago ametzler@argenau:/tmp/FFF$ find -mtime 0.5 -type f | sort ./12.hours-ago ./13.hours-ago [...] ./34.hours-ago ./35.hours-ago ametzler@argenau:/tmp/FFF$ find -mtime -1 -type f | sort ./01.hours-ago ./02.hours-ago [...] ./22.hours-ago ./23.hours-ago I gues it is not a very useful feature and it really hard to describe properly imho. cu Andreas -- `What a good friend you are to him, Dr. Maturin. His other friends are so grateful to you.' `I sew his ears on from time to time, sure'