find -delete broken, or just used improperly?

[John Baldwin]

On Friday, May 24, 2013 6:24:11 am Jilles Tjoelker wrote:
> 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 ..).

Right, my only concern is that this fix will introduce a change in behavior
that I think might be significant, so we should make sure to advertise it
well in UPDATING, etc.

-- 
John Baldwin