---

8.1.2 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) and the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is not set. 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 it’s not useful to specify ‘-nowarn’ at the end of the command line. 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.
• Specifying an option (for example ‘-mindepth’) after a non-option (for example ‘-type’ or ‘-print’) on the command line.
• Use of the ‘-name’ or ‘-iname’ option with a slash character in the pattern. Since the name predicates only compare against the basename of the visited files, the only file that can match a slash is the root directory itself.

The default behaviour above is designed to work in that way so that existing shell scripts 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 consequently cannot be turned off:

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