Re: Possible enhancement to find(1)

[Paul Goyette <paul%whooppee.com@localhost>]

On Fri, 10 Jun 2016, Robert Elz wrote:

>    Date:        Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:03:35 +0800 (PHT)
>    From:        Paul Goyette <paul%whooppee.com@localhost>
>    Message-ID:  <Pine.NEB.4.64.1606101701560.1765%pokey.whooppee.com@localhost>
>
>  | Does anyone have suggestions and web-sites for a couple of linux
>  | distros?  I'm not going to check them all...  :)
>
> I'd assume they all use the find that's in the gnu findutils which is
> in pkgsrc (sysutils/findutils)
>
> But from a man page on a real linux system...
>
>     -newerXY reference

Yeah, I noticed this, too, on findutils...

This is ugly.

If you want the linux variation, go install findutils from pkgsrc.  :)

I'm willing to add the -{a,c,m}since options (or -{a,c,}since) with 
parsing of the timestamp via parsedate(3), but I'm not going to copy 
findutils.


> The -d option of gnu date is essentially the same as in NetBSD date -d
> (though I wouldn't guarantee that our parsedate() always produces the
> same results as theirs - in fact it almost certainly doesn't).

I insist on using parsedate(3) since I want these to work:

	find .... -asince "3 days ago"
	find .... \! -since "last monday"


> Note that that man page extract is useless, and leaves you guessing (which
> is what I did) as to what this thing actually means!  The text suggests that
> both X and Y relate to the reference time, but that would make no sense at
> all.   I deduce that X is the inode time to check in the current file, and
> Y is the reference time, as X==t is invalid.

It's the only interpretation that comes close to making sense.


Anyway, I don't really care one way or the other.  I'll make my changes 
locally, and I'll get what I want.  If others want to use findutils, 
they know where to get it;  if others want my changes, ask for them.

I just won't commit them without some sort of indication of consent. 
(Just like my changes re resurrecting the ksem module, discussed last 
year...)



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