Re: Poll: what should happen when -delete fails?

[Eric Blake]

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[adding a wider audience by cc'ing bug-gnu-utils]

According to James Youngman on 8/23/2007 4:24 AM:
> A while back I implemented -delete for GNU find.  Some comments have
> been made that its behaviour when it fails are somewhat unexpected.
> I thought at the time that I made the right tradeoffs, but that might
> not be the case.  Although there is a Savannah bug open for this
> (https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?20802) please have a think about what
> you would like to happen before you read about what happens juat at
> the moment.
> 
> 
> 1. If unlink or rmdir fails, should the -delete action return true or false?
> 
> 2. If -delete returns false because it fails, should find also return nonzero?
> 
> 3. Should -delete issue a message on stderr if it fails, or (on the
> other hand) should it be possible for the caller to choose how the
> message is phrased by doing something like this?
> 
> \ ( -delete -o -fprintf /dev/stderr "No luck with %u's file %p\n" \)

Also:

4. Should -delete imply -depth, be forbidden unless -depth was specified,
or be allowed to attempt operation without -depth (in which case deleting
directory hierarchies will fail because the rmdir is attempted before the
contents of the directory)?

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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