Re: find -delete .. Do What I Mean?

[Leslie P. Polzer]

> With all other tools I use, I'm used to indifference of the order of the
> arguments. In find's case, placing -delete before -iname happily deletes
> every file and folder below the current directory. Without warning or
> confirmation. Even if this is not a bug, this clearly does not follow the
> "Do What I Mean" principle.

Yes. Perhaps an action as first argument should be treated specially.


> I would like to know if this can be submitted as a bug. And if not, why this
> behavior was chosen.

Well, find *is* indifferent to the order -- of "expressions".
An expression, however, may consist of more than one command-line
argument, the order of which does matter. There's not really
a way to change this globally, more so if the traditional behaviour
is not to be broken. It just has to happen that way.

  Leslie