GNU bug report logs - #12675
find RFE test verb "-inodes"

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From: help-debbugs <at> gnu.org (GNU bug Tracking System)
To: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Cc: tracker <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#12675: closed (find RFE test verb "-inodes")
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:25:02 +0000

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Your message dated Thu, 18 Oct 2012 11:23:03 -0600
with message-id <50803AF7.3020903 <at> redhat.com>
and subject line Re: bug#12675: find RFE test verb "-inodes"
has caused the debbugs.gnu.org bug report #12675,
regarding find RFE test verb "-inodes"
to be marked as done.

(If you believe you have received this mail in error, please contact
help-debbugs <at> gnu.org.)


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12675: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12675
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From: Linda Walsh <coreutils <at> tlinx.org>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: find RFE test verb "-inodes"
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 09:41:17 -0700

A useful thing to be a test on the number of non-structural entries in a 
directory.

By non structural, it would work like ls -A, and not include entries 
that are
part of the directory structure like "." and ".." -- with the idea of being
able to quickly determine if a directory is empty.

Maybe 'inodes' with standard +/- adjectives

So "find . -type d -inodes 0" would find all the empty dirs.

Unless, of course this is already in there and I've missed it... but
didn't see anything that would provide this w/o calling an external func
on each dir...which really slows things down...

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From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: Linda Walsh <coreutils <at> tlinx.org>
Cc: 12675-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#12675: find RFE test verb "-inodes"
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 11:23:03 -0600

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tag 12675 notabug
thanks

On 10/18/2012 10:41 AM, Linda Walsh wrote:
> A useful thing to be a test on the number of non-structural entries in a
> directory.
> 
> By non structural, it would work like ls -A, and not include entries
> that are
> part of the directory structure like "." and ".." -- with the idea of being
> able to quickly determine if a directory is empty.

So which do you really want - to know how many directory entries exist,
or to just know if a directory is (non-)empty?  The former would be a
new feature, while the latter already exists as a GNU find extension.

> 
> Maybe 'inodes' with standard +/- adjectives
> 
> So "find . -type d -inodes 0" would find all the empty dirs.
> 
> Unless, of course this is already in there and I've missed it... but
> didn't see anything that would provide this w/o calling an external func
> on each dir...which really slows things down...

Sorry, but you've reached the wrong list.  GNU coreutils does not
maintain find(1); for that, you'd need to write to the findutils list.
But while you are correct that POSIX does not provide this capability,
GNU find already does what you want:

find -type d -empty

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake <at> redhat.com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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