Re: find . -wholename ’./src/emacs’ - prune -o -print

[James Youngman]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 10:42 AM, James Youngman <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 5:29 AM, Reza Roboubi <address@hidden> wrote:
>> find . -wholename './src/emacs/' -prune -o -print   (extra slash)
>>
>> and that wasn't working.  Why is that?
>
> Because path names examined by find never include a trailing slash.
>
> Similarly "find -name a/b" will never find anything, since -name only
> works with files' base names (i.e. with the directory part removed)
> and so they never include a slash.
>
> The manpage should probably point out both facts.

The manpage already points this out for -path (and hence -wholename):

              Find  compares  the  -path  argument with the concatenation of a
              directory name and the base name of  the  file  it’s  examining.
              Since the concatenation will never end with a slash, -path argu‐
              ments ending in a slash will match  nothing  (except  perhaps  a
              start point specified on the command line).

I just pushed the attached patch to deal with -name better.

James.

0001-Explain-the-problems-with-name-a-b-and-path-foo.patch
Description: Text Data