LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Find command interpretation

- AIX (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/aix-43/)

- - Find command interpretation (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/aix-43/find-command-interpretation-4175456815/)

Find command interpretation

Hi all,

For IBM AIX, I would like to know what is the default 'sorting' for the files being displayed as a result of a 'find' command? For example i have the following command:

Code:

find . -type f -name "D2B.PAD*" |tail -1

I piped the find command with the tail command, with a purpose of returning the 'latest' file in the current folder. Please note that I did not use any 'mtime' parameter for the find command. So, with the command above, I do not have the guarantee that the latest file will be displayed.

However, I would like to know what is the default 'sorting' of the files being retrieved by the command. In other words, could I predict which files in the current directory will be retrieved first and last? I searched through IBM's website, and the closest that I could get is that the command 'recursively' searches the directory structure.

Kindly help me out.

Don't expect anything, files can come in any order. (see also ls -U)

yes, the real order is more or less a random, not ordered sequence, just how these entries follow each other in the directory. It may change by several things like file creation, removal, modification ....
ls -U will give you this so called "directory order"

Thanks for the confirmation. Cheers!

random? I would have expected it to be the order in the directory. On AIX 6.1 it seems to be an alphabetical sort, and when find sees a directory it goes deeper, i.e., follows the tree, immediately.

Try od -d -c . to look at the directory view of the world. (Note: the first two bytes are the inode number (-d) the rest is the first 14 bytes of the filename (-c)

Code:

michael@x054:[/home/michael]od -d -c . | head -20

0000000    4096  11776      0      0      0      0      0      0

        020  \0  .  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

0000020      2  11822      0      0      0      0      0      0

        \0 002  .  .  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

0000040    4128  11891  29544      0      0      0      0      0

        020      .  s  s  h  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

0000060    4097  25697  29793      0      0      0      0      0

        020 001  d  a  t  a  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

0000100    4207  30770  12593  11885  30064      0      0      0

        020  o  x  2  1  1  .  m  u  p  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

0000120    4099  11894  26975  26729  29556  28530  30976      0

        020 003  .  v  i  _  h  i  s  t  o  r  y  \0  \0  \0

0000140    4160  25193  28160      0      0      0      0      0

        020  @  b  i  n  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

0000160    4100  11888  29295  26217  27749      0      0      0

        020 004  .  p  r  o  f  i  l  e  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

0000200    4192  11891  30050  30309  29299  26991  28160      0

        020  `  .  s  u  b  v  e  r  s  i  o  n  \0  \0  \0

0000220    4103  29549  26996  11891  25458  26992  29696      0

        020  \a  s  m  i  t  .  s  c  r  i  p  t  \0  \0  \0

find and ls -U are running alphabetically:

Code:

michael@x054:[/home/michael]ls -aUi | head

4096 .

2 ..

4216 .Xauthority

4105 .exrc

4100 .profile

4111 .rnd

4214 .sh_history

4128 .ssh

12290 .ssh2

4192 .subversion

Code:

michael@x054:[/home/michael]find . -ls | head

 4096    4 drwxr-xr-x 10 michael  felt          4096 Apr 17 19:47 .

 4216    1 -rw-------  1 michael  felt          400 Apr 16 22:22 ./.Xauthority

 4105    1 -rw-r--r--  1 root      system          37 Oct 29 11:59 ./.exrc

 4100    1 -rwx------  1 michael  staff          150 Feb 24 13:49 ./.profile

 4111    1 -rw-------  1 root      system        1024 Feb 28 15:32 ./.rnd

 4214  11 -rw-------  1 michael  felt        11148 Apr 18 12:20 ./.sh_history

 4128    4 drwx--x--x  2 michael  staff        4096 Apr 17 19:50 ./.ssh

 4129    2 -rw-r--r--  1 michael  system        1259 May  3  2005 ./.ssh/55WA.pub

 4130    1 -rw-r--r--  1 michael  staff          746 Apr  3  2003 ./.ssh/Michael AM Felt.pub

12291    2 -rw-r--r--  1 michael  felt          1246 Apr 17 19:45 ./.ssh/T430.pub

True, in AIX 'ls -U' doesn't mean unsorted. Also, in AIX 6+ (unlike AIX 5) find does sort by filename.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NevemTeve (Post 4934181)

True, in AIX 'ls -U' doesn't mean unsorted. Also, in AIX 6+ (unlike AIX 5) find does sort by filename.

Hmmmmm. Do we have a documentation from IBM on this one? something that I could quote to my business guys?

Well, the find manual I saw doesn't say anything about sorting the file-names, so it is only the result of my experiments: find in 5 doesn't sort, find in 6 does sort.

for your business guys i would focus on AIX 6.1, AIX 7.1 behavior. exception would be a script that depends on a particular sort versus do not care.

If i have time to load a partition with AIX 5, and i recall the question, I'll repeat my own suggestion above.

The find program just processes names in whatever order they were obtained by a readdir() or getdents() system call, and that is determined by the underlying filesystem. Unless you are running in a very narrowly defined environment, it is unwise to depend on any particular ordering. For many filesystems, the ordering is not meaningful.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rknichols (Post 4935368)

Totally agree, if you need an ordered list just do it yourself

Quote:

Originally Posted by rknichols (Post 4935368)

I think I could use the above system calls in my nex steps. Thank you very much.

---------- Post added 04-22-13 at 12:34 PM ----------

Thanks for the input guys. I'll open another thread related to my concern.