URL:
<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?20865>
Summary: -delete interacts with -prune
Project: findutils
Submitted by: None
Submitted on: Wednesday 08/22/2007 at 08:50 UTC
Category: find
Severity: 3 - Normal
Item Group: None
Status: None
Privacy: Public
Assigned to: None
Originator Name: Bruno De Fraine
Originator Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Open/Closed: Open
Discussion Lock: Any
Release: 4.2.28
Fixed Release: None
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Details:
There is a potentially dangerous interaction between -delete and -prune:
-delete turns on -depth, which (in turn) silently disables the effects of
-prune. This caused seemingly inexplicable data loss for me on a number of
occassions before I understood the problem.
This interaction is specifically malicious because it only occurs when you
proceed to deleting. For example, you can use -prune to list only the 'real'
files in a Subversion working copy:
$ find -not "(" -name .svn -type d -prune ")" -type f
./a.txt
If you rerun the command-line with -delete added to the end, intending to
proceed with the deletion of those files, you actually silently delete more,
as only a listing with -depth reveals:
$ find -depth -not "(" -name .svn -type d -prune ")" -type f
./.svn/text-base/a.txt.svn-base
./.svn/entries
./.svn/all-wcprops
./.svn/format
./a.txt
Given that this is documented behavior of two (perhaps ill-considered)
features, is there room for any of the following changes to mitigate this
problem?
* -delete does not turn on -depth implicitly
* issue a warning/error when using -prune in case of -depth
* issue an ad hoc warning/error when detecting the combination of -prune and
-delete
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