find -delete broken, or just used improperly?

[Jilles Tjoelker]

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 11:06:39AM -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
> On Monday, May 20, 2013 5:47:31 pm Jilles Tjoelker wrote:
> > The below patch allows deleting the pathname given to find itself:

> > Index: usr.bin/find/function.c
> > ===================================================================
> > --- usr.bin/find/function.c	(revision 250661)
> > +++ usr.bin/find/function.c	(working copy)
> > @@ -442,7 +442,8 @@
> >  		errx(1, "-delete: forbidden when symlinks are followed");
> >  
> >  	/* Potentially unsafe - do not accept relative paths whatsoever */
> > -	if (strchr(entry->fts_accpath, '/') != NULL)
> > +	if (entry->fts_level > FTS_ROOTLEVEL &&
> > +	    strchr(entry->fts_accpath, '/') != NULL)
> >  		errx(1, "-delete: %s: relative path potentially not safe",
> >  			entry->fts_accpath);

> I'm curious, how would you instruct a patched find to avoid deleteing
> the /tmp/foo directory (e.g. if you wanted this to be a job that
> pruned empty dirs from /tmp/foo but never pruned the directory
> itself).  Would -mindepth 1 do it?  (Just asking.  I have also found
> this message annoying but most of the jobs I have seen it on probably
> don't want to delete the root path, just descendants.)

-mindepth 1 works, as does cd /tmp/foo && find . -... (-delete silently
ignores . and ..).

-- 
Jilles Tjoelker