• the goal is to fully mimic GNU find (with a limited set of options)
• performance is comparable to find
• no memory leaks
• no action is repeated, if possible. Most notably, lstat calls are done exactly once per entry
• no limits for the path and symlink length
• "microservices": everyting is decoupled into functions
• relying exclusively on EXIT_SUCCESS and EXIT_FAILURE
• errors are checked for every function, even printf
• the output of pwd and grp is cached (this makes -ls 3x faster)
• constant testing during development: performance, memory usage, Travis with gcc and clang
• using static code analysis with scan-build and coverity
• consistent code formatting (LLVM), automatically maintained by clang-format
• full support of the gnu99 and gnu11 standards

Building

git clone https://github.com/amq/myfind.git
cd myfind
mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Usage

./myfind [ <location> ] [ <aktion> ]
-help               show this message
-print              print entries with paths
-ls                 print entry details
-type [bcdpfls]     entries of a specific type
-nouser             entries not belonging to a user
-user <name>|<uid>  entries belonging to a user
-name <pattern>     entry names matching a pattern
-path <pattern>     entry paths (incl. names) matching a pattern

Performance

# tested 5 times and recorded the fastest time and the worst memory case

time ./myfind / -ls > mylist.txt
real	0m1.421s
user	0m0.732s
sys	    0m0.684s
VIRT    RES    SHR
21752   2808   2452

time find / -ls > list.txt
real	0m1.495s
user	0m0.784s
sys	    0m0.696s
VIRT    RES    SHR
25196   3380   2952


time ./myfind / -user 1000 -ls > mylist.txt
real	0m0.752s
user	0m0.180s
sys	    0m0.568s
VIRT    RES    SHR
21816   2824   2452

time find / -user 1000 -ls > list.txt
real	0m0.657s
user	0m0.232s
sys	    0m0.420s
VIRT    RES    SHR
25076   3364   2928


time ./myfind / -name *sys* -ls > mylist.txt
real	0m0.727s
user	0m0.244s
sys	    0m0.480s
VIRT    RES    SHR
21780   2904   2544

time find / -name *sys* -ls > list.txt
real	0m0.460s
user	0m0.180s
sys	    0m0.276s
VIRT    RES    SHR
25400   3604   3008