4.*

4.0.1

August 19, 2024

Bug fixes

bfs no longer prints a "suppressed errors" warning unless -noerror is actually suppressing errors 5d03c9d

4.0

August 16, 2024

New features

To match BSD find (and the POSIX Utility Syntax Guidelines), multiple flags can now be given in a single argument like -LEXO2. Previously, you would have had to write -L -E -X -O2. (c0fd33a)
Explicit timestamps can now be written as @SECONDS_SINCE_EPOCH. For example, bfs -newermt @946684800 will print files modified since January 1, 2000 (UTC). (c6bb003)
The new -noerror option suppresses all error messages during traversal. (#142)

Changes

-mount now excludes mount points entirely, to comply with the recently published POSIX 2024 standard. Use -xdev to include the mount point itself, but not its contents. bfs has been warning about this change since version 1.5.1 (September 2019). (33b85e1)
-perm now takes the current file creation mask into account when parsing a symbolic mode like +rw, as clarified by POSIX defect 1392. This matches the behaviour of BSD find, contrary to the behaviour of GNU find. (6290ce4)

Bug fixes

Fixed commands like ./configure CC=clang --enable-release that set variables before other options (49a5d48)
Fixed the build on RISC-V with GCC versions older than 14 (e93a1dc)
Fixed running bfs under Valgrind (a01cfac)
Fixed the exit code when failing to execute a non-existent command with -exec/-ok on some platforms including OpenBSD and HPPA (8c130ca)
Fixed $LS_COLORS case-sensitivity to match GNU ls more closely when the same extension is specified multiple times (08030ae)
Fixed the -status bar on Solaris/Illumos

3.*

3.3.1

June 3, 2024

Bug fixes

Reduced the scope of the symbolic link loop change in version 3.3. -xtype l remains true for symbolic link loops, matching a change in GNU findutils 4.10.0. However, -L will report an error, just like bfs prior to 3.3 and other find implementations, as required by POSIX.

3.3

May 28, 2024

New features

The -status bar can now be toggled by SIGINFO (Ctrl+T) on systems that support it, and SIGUSR1 on other systems
-regextype now supports all regex types from GNU find (#21)
File birth times are now supported on OpenBSD

Changes

Symbolic link loops are now treated like other broken links, rather than an error
./configure now expects --with-libacl, --without-libcap, etc. rather than --enable-/--disable-
The (space) flag is now restricted to numeric -printf specifiers

Bug fixes

-regextype emacs now supports shy (non-capturing) groups
Fixed -status bar visual corruption when the terminal is resized
bfs now prints a reset escape sequence when terminated by a signal in the middle of colored output (#138)
./configure CFLAGS=... no longer overrides flags from pkg-config during configuration

3.2

May 2, 2024

New features

New -limit N action that quits immediately after N results
Implemented -context (from GNU find) for matching SELinux contexts (#27)
Implemented -printf %Z for printing SELinux contexts

Changes

The build system has been rewritten, and there is now a configure step:
```
$ ./configure
$ make
```
See ./configure --help or docs/BUILDING.md for more details.
Improved platform support
- Implemented -acl on Solaris/Illumos
- Implemented -xattr on DragonFly BSD

Bug fixes

Fixed some rarely-used code paths that clean up after allocation failures

3.1.3

March 6, 2024

Bug fixes

On Linux, the io_uring feature probing introduced in bfs 3.1.2 only applied to one thread, causing all other threads to avoid using io_uring entirely. The probe results are now copied to all threads correctly. (f64f76b)

3.1.2

February 29, 2024

Bug fixes

On Linux, we now check for supported io_uring operations before using them, which should fix bfs on 5.X series kernels that support io_uring but not all of openat()/close()/statx() (8bc72d6)
Fixed a test failure triggered by certain filesystem types for /tmp (#131)
Fixed parsing and interpretation of timezone offsets for explicit reference times used in -*since and -newerXt (a9f3cde)
Fixed the build on m68k (c749c11)

3.1.1

February 16, 2024

Changes

Performance and scalability improvements
The file count in bfs -status now has a thousands separator

3.1

February 6, 2024

New features

On Linux, bfs now uses io_uring for async I/O
On all platforms, bfs can now perform stat() calls in parallel, accelerating queries like -links, -newer, and -size, as well as colorized output
On FreeBSD, -type w now works to find whiteouts like the system find

Changes

Improved bfs -j2 performance (b2ab7a1)
Optimized -exec by using posix_spawn() when possible, which can avoid the overhead of fork() (95fbde1)
-execdir and -okdir are now rejected if $PATH contains a relative path, matching the behaviour of GNU find (163baf1)
Leading whitespace is no longer accepted in integer command line arguments like -links ' 1' (e0d7dc5)

Bug fixes

-quit and -exit could be ignored in the iterative deepening modes (-S {ids,eds}). This is now fixed (670ebd9). The bug was introduced in version 3.0.3 (commit 5f16169).
Fixed two possible errors in sort mode (-s):
- Too many open files (710c083)
- Out of memory (76ffc8d)
Fixed handling of FreeBSD union mounts (3ac3bee)
Fixed NO_COLOR handling when it's set to the empty string (79aee58)
Fixed some portability issues:
- OpenBSD
- NetBSD
- DragonFly BSD
- Illumos

3.0.4

October 12, 2023

Bug fixes

Fixed a segfault when reporting errors under musl (d40eb87)

3.0.3

October 12, 2023

Changes

Iterative deepening modes (-S {ids,eds}) were optimized by delaying teardown until the very end (5f16169)
Parallel depth-first search (-S dfs) was optimized to avoid enqueueing every file separately (2572273)

Bug fixes

Iterative deepening modes (-S {ids,eds}) were performing iterative breadth-first searches since bfs 3.0, negating any advantages they may have had over normal breadth-first search. They now do iterative depth-first searches as expected. (a029d95)
Fixed a linked-list corruption that could lead to an infinite loop on macOS and other non-Linux, non-FreeBSD platforms (773f4a4)

3.0.2

September 6, 2023

Changes

-files0-from now allows an empty set of paths to be given, matching GNU findutils 4.9.0
Reduced memory consumption in multi-threaded searches
Many man page updates

Bug fixes

Fixed an out-of-bounds memory read that could occur when escaping a string containing an incomplete multi-byte character

3.0.1

July 18, 2023

Bug fixes

Traversal fixes that mostly affect large directory trees (#107)
- bfs could encounter EMFILE, close a file, and retry many times, particularly with -j1
- Breadth-first search could become highly unbalanced, negating many of the benefits of bfs
- On non-{Linux,FreeBSD} plaforms, directories could stay open longer than necessary, consuming extra memory

3.0

July 13, 2023

New features

bfs now reads directories asynchronously and in parallel (#101). Performance is significantly improved as a result. Parallelism is controlled by the new -j flag, e.g. -j1, -j2, etc.

Changes

bfs now uses the C17 standard version, up from C11
Due to #101, bfs now requires some additional C and POSIX features:
- Standard C atomics (<stdatomic.h>)
- POSIX threads (<pthread.h>)
$LS_COLORS extensions written in different cases (e.g. *.jpg=35:*.JPG=01;35) are now matched case-sensitively, to match the new behaviour of GNU ls since coreutils version 9.2
Added a warning/error if $LS_COLORS can't be parsed, depending on whether -color is requested explicitly
Filenames with control characters are now escaped when printing with -color
Build flags like WITH_ONIGURUMA have been renamed to USE_ONIGURUMA

Bug fixes

Fixed handling of the "normal text" color (no in $LS_COLORS) to match GNU ls

2.*

2.6.3

January 31, 2023

Fixed running the tests as root on Linux 8b24de3
Fixed some tests on Android 2724dfb 0a5a80c
Stopped relying on non-POSIX touch(1) features in the tests. This should fix the tests on at least OpenBSD. 2d5edb3
User/group caches are now filled lazily instead of eagerly b41dca5
More caches and I/O streams are flushed before -exec/-ok f98a1c4
Fixed various memory safety issues found by fuzzing
712b137 5ce883d da02def c55e855
Fixed a test failure on certain macOS versions 8b24de3
Mitigated a race condition when determining filesystem types (#97)
Lots of refactoring and optimization

2.6.2

October 21, 2022

Fixed use of uninitialized memory on parsing errors involving -fprintf
Fixed Android build issues (#96)
Refactored the test suite

2.6.1

July 7, 2022

Fix stat() errors on GNU Hurd systems with glibc older than 2.35
Added fish shell tab completion (#94). Thanks @xfgusta!

2.6

May 21, 2022

Fixed deleting large NFS directories on FreeBSD (#67).
Added support for a bfs-specific BFS_COLORS environment variable.
Refactored the build system, directory structure, and documentation (#88, #89, #91). Thanks @ElectronicsArchiver!
Added zsh completion (#86). Thanks @VorpalBlade!
Updated the default color scheme to match GNU coreutils 9.1. Files with capabilities set are no longer colored differently by default, resulting in a significant performance improvement.
Became less aggressive at triggering automounts
Added support for out-of-tree builds with BUILDDIR

2.5

March 27, 2022

Added compiler-style context for errors and warnings. Errors look like this:

$ bfs -nam needle
bfs: error: bfs -nam needle
bfs: error:     ~~~~
bfs: error: Unknown argument; did you mean -name?

and warnings look like this:

$ bfs -print -name 'needle'
bfs: warning: bfs -print -name needle
bfs: warning:            ~~~~~~~~~~~~
bfs: warning: The result of this expression is ignored.

Updated from C99 to C11
Fixed the tests when built against musl
Fixed a build error reported on Manjaro

2.4.1

February 24, 2022

Fixed the build when Oniguruma is not installed in the default search paths (#82)
Fixed string encoding bugs with Oniguruma enabled
Fixed regex error reporting bugs

2.4

February 22, 2022

Added the Oniguruma regular expression library as an (optional, but enabled by default) dependency (#81). Oniguruma supports more regular expression syntax types than the POSIX regex API, and often performs better. To build bfs without this new dependency, do make WITH_ONIGURUMA= to disable it. Thanks @data-man!
Added support for the ed, emacs, grep, and sed regular expression types (#21)
Before executing a process with -exec[dir]/-ok[dir], bfs now ensures all output streams are flushed. Previously, I/O from subprocesses could be interleaved unpredictably with buffered I/O from bfs itself.

2.3.1

January 21, 2022

Fixed the build on Debian kFreeBSD
Fixed a crash on GNU Hurd when piping bfs's output
Fixed a double-close() on non-Linux platforms if fdopendir() fails
Reduced memory allocations on startup

2.3

November 25, 2021

More tweaks to PAGER and LESS handling for bfs -help (#76)
Use 512-byte blocks for -ls when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set (#77)
Implemented -files0-from FILE to take a list of '\0'-separated starting paths. GNU find will implement the same feature in an upcoming release.
Added colors to -printf output (#62)
Faster recovery from E2BIG during -exec

2.2.1

June 2, 2021

Fixed some incorrect coloring of broken links when links are being followed (-L)
Made the tests work when run as root by dropping privileges. This may be helpful for certain packaging or CI environments, but is not recommended.
Treat empty PAGER and LESS environment variables like they're unset, for bfs -help (#71). Thanks @markus-oberhumer!
The soft RLIMIT_NOFILE is now raised automatically to a fairly large value when possible. This provides a minor performance benefit for large directory trees.
Implemented time units for -mtime as found in FreeBSD find (#75)

2.2

March 6, 2021

Fixed -hidden on hidden start paths
Added a Bash completion script. Thanks @bmundt6!
Fixed rounding in -used. Corresponding fixes were made to GNU find in version 4.8.0.
Optimized the open directory representation. On Linux, much libc overhead is bypassed by issuing syscalls directly. On all platforms, a few fewer syscalls and open file descriptors will be used.
Implemented -flags from BSD find

2.1

November 11, 2020

Added a new -status option that displays the search progress in a bar at the bottom of the terminal
Fixed an optimizer bug introduced in version 2.0 that affected some combinations of -user/-group and -nouser/-nogroup

2.0

October 14, 2020

#8: New -exclude <expression> syntax to more easily and reliably filter out paths. For example:
```
bfs -name config -exclude -name .git
```
will find all files named config, without searching any directories (or files) named .git. In this case, the same effect could have been achieved (more awkwardly) with -prune:
```
bfs ! $ -name .git -prune $ -name config
```
But -exclude will work in more cases:
```
# -exclude works with -depth, while -prune doesn't:
bfs -depth -name config -exclude -name .git

# -exclude applies even to paths below the minimum depth:
bfs -mindepth 3 -name config -exclude -name .git
```
#30: -nohidden is now equivalent to -exclude -hidden. This changes the behavior of command lines like
```
bfs -type f -nohidden
```
to do what was intended.
Optimized the iterative deepening (-S ids) implementation
Added a new search strategy: exponential deepening search (-S eds). This strategy provides many of the benefits of iterative deepening, but much faster due to fewer re-traversals.
Fixed an optimizer bug that could skip -empty/-xtype if they didn't always lead to an action
Implemented -xattrname to find files with a particular extended attribute (from macOS find)
Made -printf %l still respect the width specifier (e.g. %10l) for non-links, to match GNU find
Made bfs fail if -color is given explicitly and LS_COLORS can't be parsed, rather than falling back to non-colored output

1.*

1.7

April 22, 2020

Fixed -ls printing numeric IDs instead of user/group names in large directory trees
Cached the user and group tables for a performance boost
Fixed interpretation of "default" ACLs
Implemented -s flag to sort results

1.6

February 25, 2020

Implemented -newerXt (explicit reference times), -since, -asince, etc.
Fixed -empty to skip special files (pipes, devices, sockets, etc.)

1.5.2

January 9, 2020

Fixed the build on NetBSD
Added support for NFSv4 ACLs on FreeBSD
Added a + after the file mode for files with ACLs in -ls
Supported more file types (whiteouts, doors) in symbolic modes for -ls/-printf %M
Implemented -xattr on FreeBSD

1.5.1

September 14, 2019

Added a warning to -mount, since it will change behaviour in the next POSIX revision
Added a workaround for environments that block statx() with seccomp(), like older Docker
Fixed coloring of nonexistent leading directories
Avoided calling stat() on all mount points at startup

1.5

June 27, 2019

New -xattr predicate to find files with extended attributes
Fixed the -acl implementation on macOS
Implemented depth-first (-S dfs) and iterative deepening search (-S ids)
Piped -help output into $PAGER by default
Fixed crashes on some invalid LS_COLORS values

1.4.1

April 5, 2019

Added a nicer error message when the tests are run as root
Fixed detection of comparison expressions with signs, to match GNU find for things like -uid ++10
Added support for https://no-color.org/
Decreased the number of stat() calls necessary in some cases

1.4

April 15, 2019

New -unique option that filters out duplicate files (#48)
Optimized the file coloring implementation
Fixed the coloring implementation to match GNU ls more closely in many corner cases
- Implemented escape sequence parsing for LS_COLORS
- Implemented ln=target for coloring links like their targets
- Fixed the order of fallbacks used when some color keys are unset
Add a workaround for incorrect file types for bind-mounted files on Linux (#37)

1.3.3

February 10, 2019

Fixed unpredictable behaviour for empty responses to -ok/-okdir caused by an uninitialized string
Writing to standard output now causes bfs to fail if the descriptor was closed
Fixed incomplete file coloring in error messages
Added some data flow optimizations
Fixed -nogroup/-nouser in big directory trees
Added -type w for whiteouts, as supported by FreeBSD find
Re-wrote the -help message and manual page

1.3.2

January 11, 2019

Fixed an out-of-bounds read if LS_COLORS doesn't end with a :
Allowed multiple debug flags to be specified like -D opt,tree

1.3.1

January 3, 2019

Fixed some portability problems affecting FreeBSD

1.3

January 2, 2019

New features:

-acl finds files with non-trivial Access Control Lists (from FreeBSD)
-capable finds files with capabilities set
-D all turns on all debugging flags at once

Fixes:

LS_COLORS handling has been improved:
- Extension colors are now case-insensitive like GNU ls
- or (orphan) and mi (missing) files are now treated differently
- Default colors can be unset with di=00 or similar
- Specific colors fall back to more general colors when unspecified in more places
- LS_COLORS no longer needs a trailing colon
-ls/-fls now prints the major/minor numbers for device nodes
-exec ; is rejected rather than segfaulting
bfs now builds on old Linux versions that require -lrt for POSIX timers
For files whose access/change/modification times can't be read, bfs no longer fails unless those times are needed for tests
The testsuite is now more correct and portable

1.2.4

September 24, 2018

GNU find compatibility fixes for -printf:
- %Y now prints ? if an error occurs resolving the link
- %B is now supported for birth/creation time (as well as %W/%w)
- All standard strftime() formats are supported, not just the ones from the GNU find manual
Optimizations are now re-run if any expressions are reordered
-exec and friends no longer leave zombie processes around when exec() fails

1.2.3

July 15, 2018

Fixed test_depth_error on filesystems that don't fill in d_type
Fixed the build on Linux architectures that don't have the statx() syscall (ia64, sh4)
Fixed use of AT_EMPTY_PATH for fstatat on systems that don't support it (Hurd)
Fixed ARG_MAX accounting on architectures with large pages (ppc64le)
Fixed the build against the upcoming glibc 2.28 release that includes its own statx() wrapper

1.2.2

June 23, 2018

Minor bug fixes:
- Fixed -exec ... '{}' + argument size tracking after recovering from E2BIG
- Fixed -fstype if /proc is available but /etc/mtab is not
- Fixed an uninitialized variable when given -perm +rw...
- Fixed some potential "error: 'path': Success" messages
Reduced reliance on GNU coreutils in the testsuite
Refactored and simplified the internals of bftw()

1.2.1

February 8, 2018

Performance optimizations

1.2

January 20, 2018

Added support for the -perm +7777 syntax deprecated by GNU find (equivalent to -perm /7777), for compatibility with BSD finds
Added support for file birth/creation times on platforms that report it
- -Bmin/-Btime/-Bnewer
- B flag for -newerXY
- %w and %Wk directives for -printf
- Uses the statx(2) system call on new enough Linux kernels
More robustness to E2BIG added to the -exec implementation

1.1.4

October 27, 2017

Added a man page
Fixed cases where multiple actions write to the same file
Report errors that occur when closing files/flushing streams
Fixed "argument list too long" errors with -exec ... '{}' +

1.1.3

October 4, 2017

Refactored the optimizer
Implemented data flow optimizations

1.1.2

September 10, 2017

Fixed -samefile and similar predicates when passed broken symbolic links
Implemented -fstype on Solaris
Fixed -fstype under musl
Implemented -D search
Implemented a cost-based optimizer

1.1.1

August 10, 2017

Re-licensed under the BSD Zero Clause License
Fixed some corner cases with -exec and -ok parsing

1.1

July 22, 2017

Implemented some primaries from NetBSD find:
- -exit [STATUS] (like -quit, but with an optional explicit exit status)
- -printx (escape special characters for xargs)
- -rm (alias for -delete)
Warn if -prune will have no effect due to -depth
Handle y/n prompts according to the user's locale
Prompt the user to correct typos without having to re-run bfs
Fixed handling of paths longer than PATH_MAX
Fixed spurious "Inappropriate ioctl for device" errors when redirecting -exec ... + output
Fixed the handling of paths that treat a file as a directory (e.g. a/b/c where a/b is a regular file)
Fixed an expression optimizer bug that broke command lines like bfs -name '*' -o -print

1.0.2

June 15, 2017

Bugfix release.

Fixed handling of \0 inside -printf format strings
Fixed -perm interpretation of permcopy actions (e.g. u=rw,g=r)

1.0.1

May 17, 2017

Bugfix release.

Portability fixes that mostly affect GNU Hurd
Implemented -D exec
Made -quit not disable the implicit -print

1.0

April 24, 2017

This is the first release of bfs with support for all of GNU find's primitives.

Changes since 0.96:

Implemented -fstype
Implemented -exec/-execdir ... +
Implemented BSD's -X
Fixed the tests under Bash 3 (mostly for macOS)
Some minor optimizations and fixes

0.*

0.96

March 11, 2017

73/76 GNU find features supported.

Implemented -nouser and -nogroup
Implemented -printf and -fprintf
Implemented -ls and -fls
Implemented -type with multiple types at once (e.g. -type f,d,l)
Fixed 32-bit builds
Fixed -lname on "symlinks" in Linux /proc
Fixed -quit to take effect as soon as it's reached
Stopped redirecting standard input from /dev/null for -ok and -okdir, as that violates POSIX
Many test suite improvements

0.88

December 20, 2016

67/76 GNU find features supported.

Fixed the build on macOS, and some other UNIXes
Implemented -regex, -iregex, -regextype, and BSD's -E
Implemented -x (same as -mount/-xdev) from BSD
Implemented -mnewer (same as -newer) from BSD
Implemented -depth N from BSD
Implemented -sparse from FreeBSD
Implemented the T and P suffices for -size, for BSD compatibility
Added support for -gid NAME and -uid NAME as in BSD

0.84.1

November 24, 2016

Bugfix release.

Fixed #7 again
Like GNU find, don't print warnings by default if standard input is not a terminal
Redirect standard input from /dev/null for -ok and -okdir
Skip . when -delete'ing
Fixed -execdir when the root path has no slashes
Fixed -execdir in /
Support -perm +MODE for symbolic modes
Fixed the build on FreeBSD

0.84

October 29, 2016

64/76 GNU find features supported.

Spelling suggestion improvements
Handle --
(Untested) support for exotic file types like doors, ports, and whiteouts
Improved robustness in the face of closed std{in,out,err}
Fixed the build on macOS
Implement -ignore_readdir_race, -noignore_readdir_race
Implement -perm

0.82

September 4, 2016

62/76 GNU find features supported.

Rework optimization levels
- -O1
  - Simple boolean simplification
- -O2
  - Purity-based optimizations, allowing side-effect-free tests like -name or -type to be moved or removed
- -O3 (default):
  - Re-order tests to reduce the expected cost (TODO)
- -O4
  - Aggressive optimizations that may have surprising effects on warning/error messages and runtime, but should not otherwise affect the results
- -Ofast:
  - Always the highest level, currently the same as -O4
Color files with multiple hard links correctly
Treat -, ), and , as paths when required to by POSIX
- ) and , are only supported before the expression begins
Implement -D opt
Implement -D rates
Implement -fprint
Implement -fprint0
Implement BSD's -f
Suggest fixes for typo'd arguments

0.79

May 27, 2016

60/76 GNU find features supported.

Remove an errant debug printf() from -used
Implement the {} ; variants of -exec, -execdir, -ok, and -okdir

0.74

March 12, 2016

56/76 GNU find features supported.

Color broken symlinks correctly
Fix #7
Fix -daystart's rounding of midnight
Implement (most of) -newerXY
Implement -used
Implement -size

0.70

February 23, 2016

53/76 GNU find features supported.

New make install and make uninstall targets
Squelch non-positional warnings for -follow
Reduce memory footprint by as much as 64% by closing DIR*s earlier
Speed up bfs by ~5% by using a better FD cache eviction policy
Fix infinite recursion when evaluating ! expr
Optimize unused pure expressions (e.g. -empty -a -false)
Optimize double-negation (e.g. ! ! -name foo)
Implement -D stat and -D tree
Implement -O

0.67

February 14, 2016

Initial release.

51/76 GNU find features supported.

Files

CHANGELOG.md

Latest commit

History

CHANGELOG.md

File metadata and controls

4.*

4.0.1

Bug fixes

4.0

New features

Changes

Bug fixes

3.*

3.3.1

Bug fixes

3.3

New features

Changes

Bug fixes

3.2

New features

Changes

Bug fixes

3.1.3

Bug fixes

3.1.2

Bug fixes

3.1.1

Changes

3.1

New features

Changes

Bug fixes

3.0.4

Bug fixes

3.0.3

Changes

Bug fixes

3.0.2

Changes

Bug fixes

3.0.1

Bug fixes

3.0

New features

Changes

Bug fixes

2.*

2.6.3

2.6.2

2.6.1

2.6

2.5

2.4.1

2.4

2.3.1

2.3

2.2.1

2.2

2.1

2.0

1.*

1.7

1.6

1.5.2

1.5.1

1.5

1.4.1

1.4

1.3.3

1.3.2

1.3.1

1.3

1.2.4

1.2.3

1.2.2

1.2.1

1.2

1.1.4