Re: Imprecision in documentation of -newer

Andreas Metzler <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnu.findutils.bugs
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 2020-11-21 Reuben Thomas via Bug reports for the GNU find utilities <[email protected]> wrote:
> The manual (current git) says:

> True if the time of the last access (or status change or data modification)
> > of the current file is more recent than that of the last data modification
> > of the @var{reference} file.
> >

> Presumably it really means:

> True if the time of the last access (or status change or data modification)
> of the current file is more recent than that of the @var{reference} file.

> In other words, like is compared with like, it's not always the mtime of
> the reference file that is used.

Hello,

The documentation is correct. The reference file's mtime is compared
against the tested file's {a,c,m}time}
~~~
ametzler@argenau:/tmp/findtest$ for atime in 2000-01-01  2005-01-01 ; do for mtime in 2000-01-01 2005-01-01  ; do touch -m --date=$mtime m${mtime}-a${atime} ; touch -a --date=$atime m${mtime}-a${atime} ; done ; done
ametzler@argenau:/tmp/findtest$ ls -l ; echo atime ; ls -l --time=atime
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ametzler ametzler 0 Jan  1  2000 m2000-01-01-a2000-01-01
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ametzler ametzler 0 Jan  1  2000 m2000-01-01-a2005-01-01
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ametzler ametzler 0 Jan  1  2005 m2005-01-01-a2000-01-01
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ametzler ametzler 0 Jan  1  2005 m2005-01-01-a2005-01-01
atime
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ametzler ametzler 0 Jan  1  2000 m2000-01-01-a2000-01-01
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ametzler ametzler 0 Jan  1  2005 m2000-01-01-a2005-01-01
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ametzler ametzler 0 Jan  1  2000 m2005-01-01-a2000-01-01
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ametzler ametzler 0 Jan  1  2005 m2005-01-01-a2005-01-01

ametzler@argenau:/tmp/findtest$ find -type f -anewer m2000-01-01-a2005-01-01
./m2005-01-01-a2005-01-01
./m2000-01-01-a2005-01-01

cu Andreas

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