Re: [bug #61774] Docs for find -delete out of sync
Hello,
updating the manpage sounds good, but maybe find also needs an
update/patch, as it (imho) does not work correctly (with the find .
-delete) as intended?
# warning! this can ruin one's day
mkdir temp
cd temp
touch 1 2 3 f25020672.avi
# only finds that file
find . -name "*f25020672.avi*"
./f25020672.avi
# DANGER! THIS DELETES ALL (!!!) FILES IN THE CURRENT DIRECTORY! (NOT ONLY THE
-name “*FILES*” SPECIFIED )
find . -delete -name "*f25020672.avi*" <- why does it do that? it is like it
completely ignores anything after -delete X-D (and just deletes everything in the current
dir)
# this would have been the correct way to do it
find . -name "*f25020672.avi*" -delete
https://dwaves.de/2021/12/20/be-careful-with-find-delete-find-delete-name-vs-find-name-delete/
On 1/31/22 00:57, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
Update of bug #61774 (project findutils):
Status:None => Code Review
Assigned to:None => berny
Fixed Release:None => 4.9.0
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Follow-up Comment #1:
Thanks for the report and the suggested patch.
The formatting for the Texinfo changes were not ideal
(e.g. it is better to use a "@quotation" environment for
a warning block.
Also "Because -delete implies @samp{-delete}, ..." was obviously wrong.
I tried further to improve and unify the -delete description
in the attached git patch.
Okay to push in your name?
Thanks & have a nice day,
Berny
(file #52778)
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Re: [bug #61774] Docs for find -delete out of sync
hello, first of thanks all for the hard work: get the point, left to right processing of arguments, okay but, when someone reads or writes this one-liner: find . -delete -name "*f25020672.avi*" nobody would have guessed that it will delete everything (send this one liner to 10x friends and ask them (without trying it out! so maybe in person or in a videocall) what this one-liner will do... will bet ahttps://ko-fi.com/ that 90% will say "it will delete this file f25020672.avi and all files that are similar like ABCf25020672.aviABC cu On 1/31/22 22:35, Bernhard Voelker wrote: find(1) was asked to - start a search in the current directory ".", - and to delete all files and directories (implicitly using -depth), - and then to apply the filter for -name '*.avi'. As the whole command line has already an action (-delete), find does not implicitly add the default action (-print), and therefore nothing happens after -name.
Re: [bug #61774] Docs for find -delete out of sync
no worries, this will be the last feedback to this problem-challenge. Beyond clearly documenting how to use the tool (which I think we do) I'm not sure what to do about the risk that admin4 is pointing out. but the UNIX philosophy is to simplify, simplify, simplify,and pretty much follow that principle and it works wonders :) what about simplifying the usability & build in fail safes? so everyone here says it is intended behavior that find -delete -name "*searchforthis*" just deletes everything under the current dir . ok, guess there will have to be a find2 then Well, other than making the user pass a quiz on how to use it the first time they invoke it, which isn't at all in the spirit of Unix and would be hard to do in a POSIX-compliant way that wasn't deeply user-surprising. try it out as root in / and have phun restoring! this intended behaviour by find forces users to transition from ext4 to zfs or btrfs and will still cost 3 years of sorting 1 million photorec restored jpg (without the filenames) by hand (until an AI comes up and does the job) so cu in 2025
Re: [bug #61774] Docs for find -delete out of sync
me so lucky: it's only 603283 jpgs to sort manually...
Re: [bug #61774] Docs for find -delete out of sync
nah my mistake now got it:
simplify in this context means: find should get rid of the -delete
("simplify")
because, (UNIX Philosophy)
* *Write programs that do one thing and do it well.*
* *Write programs to work together.*
* *Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal
interface.*
find . -name *.doc -exec rm -rf {} \; # does the same as find . -name
*.doc -delete
Malcolm Douglas McIlroy :
“Everything was small… and my heart sinks for Linux when I see the size
of it. […]
The manual page , which really
used to be a manual /page/, is now a small volume, with a thousand options…
*We used to sit around in the Unix Room saying, ‘What can we throw out?
Why is there this option?’*
*It’s often because there is some deficiency in the basic design* — you
didn’t really hit the right design point.
Instead of adding an option, think about what was forcing you to add
that option.” (src: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Doug_McIlroy)
https://dwaves.de/2017/05/02/the-unix-philosophy-simple-and-beautiful-so-it-just-works/
PS: "encourage close communication" why has communications become so
little fun? X-D https://ytpak.net/watch?v=JoVQTPbD6UY
ok that's gonna be the last mail because do not want to bother
