bashshellfindgnu-findutils

Why is find returning a directory with -type f?

I'm doing some crude code analysis and I've noticed some weird error lines in my output:

cat: rust/library/portable-simd/crates/test_helpers: Is a directory
cat: rust/library/core/tests/iter/adapters: Is a directory
cat: rust/library/core/src/iter/adapters: Is a directory
cat: rust/library/test/src/formatters: Is a directory
cat: rust/library/test/src/helpers: Is a directory

Plain files are selected using -type f and -print0 is used to avoid exactly this kind of error. To make a long story short, this happens:

$ find rust/library/core/src/iter/adapters -print0 -type f | hexdump -C | head -n3
00000000  72 75 73 74 2f 6c 69 62  72 61 72 79 2f 63 6f 72  |rust/library/cor|
00000010  65 2f 73 72 63 2f 69 74  65 72 2f 61 64 61 70 74  |e/src/iter/adapt|
00000020  65 72 73 00 72 75 73 74  2f 6c 69 62 72 61 72 79  |ers.rust/library|

Note the first entry - that is a directory!

$ la -d rust/library/core/src/iter/adapters/
drwxr-xr-x 2 user group 4096 Apr 11 01:57 rust/library/core/src/iter/adapters/

To make things extra weird, the line isn't there when omitting -print0..

$ find rust/library/core/src/iter/adapters -type f | hexdump -C | head -n3
00000000  72 75 73 74 2f 6c 69 62  72 61 72 79 2f 63 6f 72  |rust/library/cor|
00000010  65 2f 73 72 63 2f 69 74  65 72 2f 61 64 61 70 74  |e/src/iter/adapt|
00000020  65 72 73 2f 6d 61 70 2e  72 73 0a 72 75 73 74 2f  |ers/map.rs.rust/|

Is that a bug? Looks like it - but it's find. That's like.. well, erm.. well-tested and such... Surely, I'm using it wrong!

My find binary is from the GNU findutils package in Arch Linux.

EDIT: This is most definitely not a bug:

$ podman run --rm -i -v ".:/data" --workdir /data docker.io/cicirello/gnu-on-alpine:latest find rust/library/core/src/iter/adapters -type f -print0 | hexdump -C | head -n3
00000000  72 75 73 74 2f 6c 69 62  72 61 72 79 2f 63 6f 72  |rust/library/cor|
00000010  65 2f 73 72 63 2f 69 74  65 72 2f 61 64 61 70 74  |e/src/iter/adapt|
00000020  65 72 73 2f 6d 61 70 2e  72 73 00 72 75 73 74 2f  |ers/map.rs.rust/|

Everything normal. Both in and out of the container, it's find 4.9.0.

Solution

  • You need to swap -print0 and -type f, since -print0 causes the line to be printed.