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This manual shows how to find files that meet criteria you specify,
and how to perform various actions on the files that you find. The
principal programs that you use to perform these tasks are
find
, locate
, and xargs
. Some of the examples in
this manual use capabilities specific to the GNU versions of those
programs.
GNU find
was originally written by Eric Decker, with
enhancements by David MacKenzie, Jay Plett, and Tim Wood. GNU
xargs
was originally written by Mike Rendell, with enhancements
by David MacKenzie. GNU locate
and its associated utilities
were originally written by James Woods, with enhancements by David
MacKenzie. The idea for ‘find -print0’ and ‘xargs -0’ came
from Dan Bernstein. The current maintainer of GNU findutils (and this
manual) is James Youngman. Many other people have contributed bug
fixes, small improvements, and helpful suggestions. Thanks!
To report a bug in GNU findutils, please use the form on the Savannah
web site at
http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils
. Reporting bugs
this way means that you will then be able to track progress in fixing
the problem.
If you don't have web access, you can also just send mail to the mailing list. The mailing list bug-findutils@gnu.org carries discussion of bugs in findutils, questions and answers about the software and discussion of the development of the programs. To join the list, send email to bug-findutils-request@gnu.org.
Please read any relevant sections of this manual before asking for
help on the mailing list. You may also find it helpful to read the
NON-BUGS section of the find
manual page.
If you ask for help on the mailing list, people will be able to help you much more effectively if you include the following things:
It may also be the case that the bug you are describing has already been fixed, if it is a bug. Please check the most recent findutils releases at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/findutils and, if possible, the development branch at ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/findutils. If you take the time to check that your bug still exists in current releases, this will greatly help people who want to help you solve your problem. Please also be aware that if you obtained findutils as part of the GNU/Linux 'distribution', the distributions often lag seriously behind findutils releases, even the stable release. Please check the GNU FTP site.