Re: Interaction between -o and the default-print

[Bob Proulx]

James Youngman wrote:
> giuseppe bonacci wrote:
> > according to the man-page and info, the expected output from the
> > following find commands should be identical:
> > [...]
> > myhost# find . -name b -prune -o -type f -print
> > [...]
> > myhost# find . -name b -prune -o -type f        # ABNORMAL
> > [...]
> 
> I don't think this is a bug, because "find xxx" is equivalent to "find
> \( xxx \) -print" and not to "find xxx -print".  (This statement
> applies if none of the actions in xxx include -print anyway).
> 
> So, I think the second command in the above example should be
> equvalent to "find . \( -name b -prune -o -type f \) -print", not to
> the first command.   Viz :-
> [...]
> I've also sent this to address@hidden in case someone there can
> think of a reason why this is wrong..

Silence is not always the best form of agreement.  Let me say as a
crosscheck that I agree with your analysis.  This is not a bug in
find.  It is behaving as expected and required.

The POSIX docs say:

    If no expression is present, -print shall be used as the
    expression.  Otherwise, if the given expression does not contain
    any of the primaries -exec, -ok, or -print, the given expression
    shall be effectively replaced by:

    ( given_expression ) -print

Therefore using the above case these two examples must be identical in
behavior.

  find . -name b -prune -o -type f
  find . \( -name b -prune -o -type f \) -print

Bob

-- 
Bob Proulx <address@hidden>
http://www.proulx.com/~bob/
CP-ASEL-IA-Tailwheel-Glider