Package: locate
Version: 4.2.33-1
Severity: normal
The manual says:
For each given
pattern, locate searches one or more databases of file names and dis-
plays the file names that contain the pattern. Patterns can contain
shell-style metacharacters: `*', `?', and `[]'. The metacharacters do
not treat `/' or `.' specially. Therefore, a pattern `foo*bar' can
match a file name that contains `foo3/bar', and a pattern `*duck*' can
match a file name that contains `lake/.ducky'.
Note the use of the word "contain", several times. This seems to mean
that the pattern can be any part of the file name. In the example given
in the manual, I would expect locate "foo*bar" to match files like:
/usr/share/doc/package/examples/foo3/bar
But in practice, it will never match any file at all (as far as I can tell).
This is what I get:
griffon:~$ sudo updatedb
griffon:~$ locate bash\*completion
griffon:~$ locate \*bash\*completion
/etc/bash_completion
/usr/share/doc/bash/BUGS.bash_completion
Without a leading * the pattern simply never matches anything at all.
What's even more confusing is that a pattern WITHOUT a * in it works the
way I would expect (and the way the manual describes):
griffon:~$ locate bash_completion
/etc/bash_completion
/etc/bash_completion.d
/etc/bash_completion.d/debconf
/etc/bash_completion.d/m-a
/etc/bash_completion.d/make_kpkg
/etc/bash_completion.d/pon
/etc/bash_completion.d/subversion
/usr/share/doc/bash/BUGS.bash_completion
/usr/share/doc/bash/changelog.bash_completion.gz
/usr/share/doc/bash/README.bash_completion.gz
Under no circumstances would I expect bash_completion to match more files
than bash*completion does. The * version should be a superset of the _
version.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.24-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.ISO8859-1, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages locate depends on:
ii findutils 4.2.33-1 utilities for finding files--find,
ii libc6 2.7-8 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
locate recommends no packages.
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