Re: Possible enhancement to find(1)

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    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
              Compares  the timestamp of the current file with reference.  The
              reference argument is normally the name of a file  (and  one  of
              its  timestamps is used for the comparison) but it may also be a
              string describing an absolute time.  X and  Y  are  placeholders
              for other letters, and these letters select which time belonging
              to how reference is used for the comparison.

              a   The access time of the file reference
              B   The birth time of the file reference
              c   The inode status change time of reference
              m   The modification time of the file reference
              t   reference is interpreted directly as a time

              Some combinations are invalid; for example, it is invalid for  X
              to  be t.  Some combinations are not implemented on all systems;
              for example B is not supported on all systems.  If an invalid or
              unsupported  combination  of  XY  is  specified,  a  fatal error
              results.  Time specifications are interpreted as for  the  arguâ??
              ment  to the -d option of GNU date.  If you try to use the birth
              time of a reference file, and the birth time  cannot  be  deterâ??
              mined,  a  fatal  error  message results.  If you specify a test
              which refers to the birth time of  files  being  examined,  this
              test will fail for any files where the birth time is unknown.

which I think means that -newerat -newerct and -newermt are the three
options you're considering adding (please forget birthtime!)   Other than
the B cases, adding the full set wouldn't hurt I guess (-newerXX is the
same as the existing -Xnewer of course, except where X==m when it is
just -newer)

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).

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.

kre