Hi David,
please send reports like this to the GNU findutils mailing list instead of
using personal email.
On 2/17/26 18:12, David Marceau wrote:
https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/findutils.git/tree/xargs/xargs.c#n1369 <https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/
findutils.git/tree/xargs/xargs.c#n1369>
I wish to have it be replaced with this:
Thanks for the report and the suggested code change.
if (E2BIG != errno)
{
error (0, 0, "%s: %s", strerror (errno), argv[0]);
}
Using strerror() is not necessary as error() already caters for it.
Ultimately it's because when I read the errors coming from xargs.
For example a build task.
GEN kernel/kheaders_data.tar.xz
xargs: perl: No such file or directory
It would have been nice to see the executed command line. Assuming you are
using
decent Makefile style one would probably see that with 'make $TARGET
VERBOSE=yes V=1'.
Still, that's easy to craft a trivial reproducer:
$ echo hello | xargs no-such
xargs: no-such: No such file or directory
This means that the program 'xargs' had a problem with 'no-such', an the error
was ENOENT.
When I look at these 2 lines, I make a lot of assumptions to truly decipher it
correctly.
interpretation 1) ok so perl was called and it didn't find a file...was it kernel/kheaders_data.tar.xz that is couldn't
find?
interpretation 2) ok so there is a word perl and right after it, it says no such file or directory. Am I to understand
it means that no such file or directory called perl?
interpretation 3) Ok tar.xz is there, ok xargs launched, ok perl launched ok...there's an empty parameter perl was
expecting. What was the variable name holding the empty parameter? What was the kind of value it was supposed hold? Give
me a hint?tar? script? wtf!
Other errors from the called program look like ... well, whatever the program
or command outputs.
E.g.
$ echo hello | xargs du --no-such-option
du: unrecognized option '--no-such-option'
Try 'du --help' for more information.
In my mind, the error should appear first and then display the location of the error line/column along with the full
file path in question.
The above output fails to explicitly describe the error in a manner that is
easy to read.
SUGGESTION: I am asking that within the build scripts error strings contain complete sentences describing the situation
also clearly specifying fieldnames and their respective values that to this error. This will help mitigate
misinterpretations. Don't make the reader try to read your mind, express error message clearly and give as much
information as you can as to what led to this.
Thank you. I know the odds of this change being admitted are slim but at least it helps to understand why it might be
saving a lot of interpretation time from others if we made complete sentences in error strings.
I agree that the error diagnostic is a bit brief, yet I'd like to change it to
what the
GNU coreutils do in the utilities like chroot(1), nohup(1), split(1) and
timeout(1).
$ echo hello | xargs/xargs no-such
xargs/xargs: failed to run command 'no-such': No such file or directory
Pushed the attached.
Have a nice day,
Berny
From c356ebc5bbab38b20109026b335c5118c1fe69d4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Bernhard Voelker <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2026 22:09:14 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] xargs: improve error diagnostic when execvp fails
* xargs/xargs.c (xargs_do_exec): Use translation string to diagnose
that running the command via execpv failed, and quote the given command
appropriately.
* NEWS (Improvements): Mention the change.
Reported by David Marceau.
---
NEWS | 5 +++++
xargs/xargs.c | 3 ++-
2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index d4002688..aa99ccf3 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -39,6 +39,11 @@ GNU findutils NEWS - User visible changes. -*- outline -*- (allout)
are passed with a leading dash, e.g. '-!'. Future releases will not accept
that any more. Accepting that was rather a bug "since the beginning".
+** Improvements
+
+ xargs now gives a better error diagnostic when executing the given command
+ failed.
+
** Documentation Changes
The forthcoming Issue 8 of the POSIX standard will standardise "find
diff --git a/xargs/xargs.c b/xargs/xargs.c
index 7ff17f51..262a64cf 100644
--- a/xargs/xargs.c
+++ b/xargs/xargs.c
@@ -1368,7 +1368,8 @@ xargs_do_exec (struct buildcmd_control *ctl, void *usercontext, int argc, char *
close (fd[1]);
if (E2BIG != errno)
{
- error (0, errno, "%s", argv[0]);
+ error (0, errno, _("failed to run command %s"),
+ quotearg_n_style (0, locale_quoting_style, argv[0]));
}
/* The actual value returned here should be irrelevant,
* because the parent will test our value of errno.
--
2.52.0
