This package contains the GNU find, xargs, and locate programs. find and xargs comply with POSIX 1003.2. They also support a large number of additional options, some borrowed from Unix and some unique to GNU.
See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release.
See the file COPYING for copying conditions.
See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.
If there is no file INSTALL, you must be looking at the checked-out source code instead of at an unpacked source tarball ("release"). In that case, you should first please read and follow the instructions in the file README-hacking. Those instructions explain how to generate the auto-generated files needed to build findutils, and this includes generating the INSTALL file.
To verify the GPG signature of the release, you will need the public key of the findutils maintainer. You can download this from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg. Alternatively, you could query a PGP keyserver, but you will need to use one that can cope with subkeys containing photos. Many older key servers cannot do this. I use subkeys.pgp.net. I think that one works. See also the "Downloading" section of https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/.
Special configure options:
DEFAULT_ARG_SIZE= If this environment variable is defined to a numeric expression during configure, it determines the default argument size limits used by xargs without -s, and by find, when spawning child processes. Otherwise, the default is set at 128 kibibytes. If the system cannot support the default limit, the system's limit will be used instead.
To gain speed, GNU find avoids statting files whenever possible. It does this by:
- Checking the number of links to directories and not statting files that it knows aren't directories until it encounters a test or action that needs the stat info.
- Rearranging the command line, where possible, so that it can do tests that don't require a stat before tests that do, in hopes that the latter will be skipped because of a -o/-a conjunction. (But it only does this where it will leave the output unchanged.)
The locate program and its helper programs are derived (heavily
modified) from James Woods' public domain fast-find code, which is
also distributed with the 4.3BSD find. Because POSIX.2 requires find foo' to have the same effect as find foo -print', the fast-find
searching has been moved to a separate program, locate'; the same thing has been done in 4.4BSD. If you use locate, you should run the included updatedb' script from cron periodically (typically nightly).
The latest full release is available at http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/findutils.
The latest test release (if any) is available at http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/findutils
Discussion of the findutils package and ways to improve it takes place on the "bug-findutils" mailing list, which you can join by sending mail to bug-findutils-request@gnu.org. An archive of patches to the bug-findutils mailing list is available at https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-findutils/.
Bug reports, suggested patches and enhancement requests for findutils should be logged at https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils.
Changes to the findutils code are sent to the findutils-patches mailing list. To join, please send email to findutils-patches@gnu.org. You are also welcome to send patches to that list, but unless you are a list subscriber, you won't be able to follow any resulting discussion. An archive of posts to the findutils-patches mailing list is available at https://lists.gnu.org/r/findutils-patches/.
See https://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=findutils for instructions on how to use git to access the findutils source code.
Mail suggestions and bug reports for these programs to bug-findutils@gnu.org.
GNU findutils is part of the GNU Operating System, developed by the GNU Project.
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We are looking forward to hacking with you!
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Copyright (C) 1996-2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the "GNU Free Documentation License" file as part of this distribution.