7.1.1 Warning Messages

If there is an error on the find command line, an error message is normally issued. However, there are some usages that are inadvisable but which find should still accept. Under these circumstances, find may issue a warning message. By default, warnings are enabled only if find is being run interactively (specifically, if the standard input is a terminal). Warning messages can be controlled explicitly by the use of options on the command line:

-warn

Issue warning messages where appropriate.

-nowarn

Do not issue warning messages.

These options take effect at the point on the command line where they are specified. Therefore if you specify -nowarn at the end of the command line, you will not see warning messages for any problems occurring before that. The warning messages affected by the above options are triggered by:

• Use of the -d option which is deprecated; please use -depth instead, since the latter is POSIX-compliant.
• Use of the -ipath option which is deprecated; please use -iwholename instead.
• Specifying an option (for example -mindepth) after a non-option (for example -type or -print) on the command line.

The default behaviour above is designed to work in that way so that existing shell scripts which use such constructs don't generate spurious errors, but people will be made aware of the problem.

Some warning messages are issued for less common or more serious problems, and so cannot be turned off:

• Use of an unrecognised backslash escape sequence with -fprintf
• Use of an unrecognised formatting directive with -fprintf