Products · Product
find command
Raised as a usability problem by 9 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2009–2025), in 7 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Filenames with spaces break commands unless extra flags are rememberedUnreviewed
20092026- Newline separators break on filenames containing newlines, causing hard-to-debug failures and dangerous mistakes2020-02-09
- Filenames with spaces break pipelines unless the user knows the -print0/-0 flags2019-08-07
- Filenames with spaces break commands unless users remember extra flags like -print0 and --null2013-12-29
Forgets argument order, losing time recalling syntax offlineUnreviewed
20092026- Forgets argument order, loses time recalling find's syntax offline2023-10-06
- Searching by name with find is painfully slow2021-11-23
- Find has a poor user experience, so the commenter avoids it for piping to grep2020-02-09
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 9 complaints
- Hard to remember the flags needed, and the syntax is awkward even for daily users2025-01-31
- Forgets argument order, loses time recalling find's syntax offline2023-10-06
- Searching by name with find is painfully slow2021-11-23
- Newline separators break on filenames containing newlines, causing hard-to-debug failures and dangerous mistakes2020-02-09
- Find has a poor user experience, so the commenter avoids it for piping to grep2020-02-09
- Filenames with spaces break pipelines unless the user knows the -print0/-0 flags2019-08-07
- Filenames with spaces break commands unless users remember extra flags like -print0 and --null2013-12-29
- Must remember -print0 and --null to handle filenames with spaces safely2013-12-29
- Conditionals silently fail to evaluate unless parentheses are escaped2009-05-24