bin/90687: [patch] side effect of -delete option of find(1)

[Nikos Ntarmos]

The following reply was made to PR bin/90687; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Nikos Ntarmos <ntarmos at ceid.upatras.gr>
To: bug-followup at freebsd.org, anatoli at aksoft.net
Cc:  
Subject: Re: bin/90687: [patch] side effect of -delete option of find(1)
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 06:06:16 +0300

 I just stumbled upon this issue while reading the manpage for find(1).
 IMHO the fact that -delete turns -follow off is a good thing, so I
 consider this more of a bug in the manpage. The included patch removes
 the erroneous example and adds a word or two about -delete not honoring
 -L. There is a mention of -delete not interacting well with options that
 alter the traversal algorithm, but that is somewhat vague in this case.
 
 --- find.1.diff begins here ---
 Index: find.1
 ===================================================================
 RCS file: /opt/freebsd/cvs/src/usr.bin/find/find.1,v
 retrieving revision 1.82
 diff -u -r1.82 find.1
 --- find.1	28 Feb 2007 10:19:25 -0000	1.82
 +++ find.1	4 Sep 2007 02:56:40 -0000
 @@ -306,6 +306,24 @@
  .Dq Pa \&.
  for security reasons.
  Depth-first traversal processing is implied by this option.
 +Moreover, beware that
 +.Ic -delete
 +does
 +.Ar not
 +honor the semantics of
 +.Ic -L
 +since it turns off following of symbolic links for security reasons.
 +Thus,
 +.Pp
 +.Dl "find -L /usr/ports/packages -type l -delete"
 +.Pp
 +would delete
 +.Ar all
 +symbolic links under
 +.Ar /usr/ports/packages
 +as if
 +.Ic -L
 +had not been defined in the command line at all.
  .It Ic -depth
  Always true;
  same as the
 @@ -843,9 +861,6 @@
  Use the
  .Xr echo 1
  command to print out a list of all the files.
 -.It Li "find -L /usr/ports/packages -type l -delete"
 -Delete all broken symbolic links in
 -.Pa /usr/ports/packages .
  .It Li "find /usr/src -name CVS -prune -o -depth +6 -print"
  Find files and directories that are at least seven levels deep
  in the working directory
 ---- find.1.diff ends here ----