bug report: GNU find version 4.1

[paul f almquist]

Hi folks--

I just ran across a case where GNU find version 4.1 
produces a spurious error message.  This is a reproducible problem,
but not a critcal one.  Just an annoyance.
Since I'm not much of a C programmer I will leave the solution to
someone who is.

Try the following:

    bash$ cd /tmp 
    bash$ mkdir some_directory
    bash$ find . -name some_directory -exec /bin/rm -r {} \;
    find: ./some_directory: No such file or directory 

The error message should not be produced.  A standalone rm or rmdir
does not cause such an error so it must be some quirk in find.

I was using find to clean out /tmp of directories that had not
been accesses for a few days and discovered this error message
being produced.  The directory does get removed.  The find I was
using was searching by type and atime (-type d -a -atime +2) but
while investigating it seems the search criteria is not relevant
to the production of the error message.  Replacing /bin/rm with
/bin/rmdir in the find exec clause yields the same results.

Something to look into in your spare time.

My environment:
        RedHat Linux 6.2 - kernel 2.2.14-5.0, and 2.2.16
        findutils-4.1-34  rpm package from RedHat
        glibc-2.1.3-21    rpm package from RedHat
        cpu intel Pentium 3, 650MHz
  

Thanks for all you do to make computing with GNU/Linux more enjoyable.

paul almquist


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