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- This package contains the GNU find, xargs, and locate programs. find
- and xargs comply with POSIX 1003.2, as far as I know (with the
- exception of the "+" modifier for the "-exec" action, which isn't
- implemented yet). They also support a large number of additional
- options, some borrowed from Unix and some unique to GNU.
-
- See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release.
-
- See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.
-
- To verify the GPG signature of the release, you will need the public
- key of the findutils maintainer. You can download this from
- ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg. Alternatively, you could query
- a PGP keyserver, but you will need to use one that can cope with
- subkeys containing photos. Many older key servers cannot do this. I
- use subkeys.pgp.net. I think that one works. See also the
- "Downloading" section of http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/.
-
- Special configure options:
-
- --with-afs
- Make find support "-fstype afs". Requires /afs, /usr/afsws/lib, and
- /usr/afsws/include. configure doesn't add AFS support
- automatically because it adds considerably to find's size, and the
- AFS libraries need -lucb on Solaris, which breaks find.
-
- --enable-id-cache
- Make tables of used UIDs and GIDs at startup instead of using
- getpwuid or getgrgid when needed. Speeds up -nouser and -nogroup
- unless you are running NIS or Hesiod, which make password and group
- calls very expensive.
-
- --enable-debug
- Produce output on the standard error output indicating what find is
- doing. This information includes details about how the command line
- has been parsed and what files have been stat()ed. This output is
- normally interesting only to the maintainer, and so is off by default.
-
- DEFAULT_ARG_SIZE=<value>
- If this environment variable is defined to a numeric expression
- during configure, it determines the default argument size limits used
- by xargs without -s, and by find, when spawning child processes.
- Otherwise, the default is set at 128 kibibytes. If the system cannot
- support the default limit, the system's limit will be used instead.
-
-
- To gain speed, GNU find avoids statting files whenever possible.
- It does this by:
- 1. Checking the number of links to directories and not statting files
- that it knows aren't directories until it encounters a test or action
- that needs the stat info.
- 2. Rearranging the command line, where possible, so that it can do tests
- that don't require a stat before tests that do, in hopes that the
- latter will be skipped because of an OR or AND. (But it only does
- this where it will leave the output unchanged.)
-
- The locate program and its helper programs are derived (heavily
- modified) from James Woods' public domain fast-find code, which is
- also distributed with the 4.3BSD find. Because POSIX.2 requires `find
- foo' to have the same effect as `find foo -print', the fast-find
- searching has been moved to a separate program, `locate'; the same
- thing has been done in 4.4BSD. If you use locate, you should run the
- included `updatedb' script from cron periodically (typically nightly).
-
- Mail suggestions and bug reports for these programs to
- bug-findutils@gnu.org.
-