[Bug 68852] [NEW] Error in man page, re: -printf \ escape

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

You have been subscribed to a public bug by Daniel Holbach (dholbach):

Binary package hint: findutils

Hi,

In the findutils package 4.2.22-2, installed on a 'Breezy' machine, the man page states, under the section for '-printf':
              \v     Vertical tab.
              \      ASCII NUL.
              \\     A literal backslash (`\').
I believe the '\      ASCII NUL.' entry is wrong.  Despite repeated attempts to use this feature, I failed.  I eventually found that the information obtained by the command 'info find' differs on the available escapes for the -printf option.  The same documentation for the -printf command, taken from the 'info find' command on the same Breezy system reads:
      3.2.1 Escapes
      -------------
      <snip>
      `\v'     Vertical tab.
      `\\'      A literal backslash (`\').

As you can see, the '\' option is not listed.

Indeed, in my testing, this works:
find . -iname "a*" -print0 | xargs -0 du -h
This works, using octal 000 to get a null character:
find . -iname "a*" -printf '%f\000' | xargs -0 du -h
but this does not work:
find . -iname "a*" -printf '%f\' | xargs -0 du -h

Thanks!

Ben

** Affects: findutils (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Low
         Status: Fix Released


** Tags: bitesize
-- 
Error in man page, re: -printf \ escape
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/68852
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