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  • Bug#1108737: Please also index metadata like file ownership

    From Andras Korn@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jul 4 11:20:01 2025
    Package: plocate
    Version: 1.1.23-1
    Severity: wishlist
    Tags: upstream

    Hi,

    it has often happened that I wanted to efficiently find files based on not their name, but their metadata -- such as who owns them, or when they were modified, or some combination thereof.

    Of course, find(1) can do all that (albeit very slowly), but since updatedb scans all directories anyway, it might as well record and index this information as well, in addition to the filenames.

    Perhaps, instead of inventing a new syntax, include a plocate-find that supports the same syntax as find(1)?

    Thanks!

    András

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  • From Steinar H. Gunderson@21:1/5 to Andras Korn on Fri Jul 4 14:10:01 2025
    On Fri, Jul 04, 2025 at 11:07:39AM +0200, Andras Korn wrote:
    it has often happened that I wanted to efficiently find files based on not their name, but their metadata -- such as who owns them, or when they were modified, or some combination thereof.

    Of course, find(1) can do all that (albeit very slowly), but since updatedb scans all directories anyway, it might as well record and index this information as well, in addition to the filenames.

    Perhaps, instead of inventing a new syntax, include a plocate-find that supports the same syntax as find(1)?

    Hi,

    Thanks for the feature request.

    Given the amount of work and the increased size of plocate.db, I doubt I will be doing this. I can close this bug or mark it as wontfix, depending on how visible you want it. :-)

    /* Steinar */
    --
    Homepage: https://www.sesse.net/

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    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Steinar H. Gunderson@21:1/5 to Andras Korn on Sat Jul 5 13:30:01 2025
    On Sat, Jul 05, 2025 at 01:12:36PM +0200, Andras Korn wrote:
    Why not keep tag it helpwanted instead and leave it open? Maybe someone will bite. "wontfix" sounds very final, as if you were against the feature in principle.

    I doubt I would accept a patch for it, TBH. Someone could fork and do
    whatever they'd want, of course.

    /* Steinar */
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    Homepage: https://www.sesse.net/

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  • From Andras Korn@1:229/2 to Steinar H. Gunderson on Sat Jul 5 13:30:01 2025
    From: [email protected]

    On Fri, Jul 04, 2025 at 01:40:42PM +0200, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:

    Hi,

    it has often happened that I wanted to efficiently find files based on not their name, but their metadata -- such as who owns them, or when they were modified, or some combination thereof.

    Of course, find(1) can do all that (albeit very slowly), but since updatedb scans all directories anyway, it might as well record and index this information as well, in addition to the filenames.

    Perhaps, instead of inventing a new syntax, include a plocate-find that supports the same syntax as find(1)?

    Hi,

    Thanks for the feature request.

    Given the amount of work and the increased size of plocate.db, I doubt I will be doing this. I can close this bug or mark it as wontfix, depending on how visible you want it. :-)

    Why not keep tag it helpwanted instead and leave it open? Maybe someone will bite. "wontfix" sounds very final, as if you were against the feature in principle.

    András

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