find: Database Formats

1 
1 4.2 Database Formats
1 ====================
1 
1 The file name databases contain lists of files that were in particular
1 directory trees when the databases were last updated.  The file name
1 database format changed starting with GNU 'locate' version 4.0 to allow
1 machines with different byte orderings to share the databases.
1 
1    GNU 'locate' can read both the old and new database formats.
1 However, old versions of 'locate' (on other Unix systems, or GNU
1 'locate' before version 4.0) produce incorrect results if run against a
1 database in something other than the old format.
1 
1    Support for the old database format will eventually be discontinued,
1 first in 'updatedb' and later in 'locate'.
1 
1    If you run 'locate --statistics', the resulting summary indicates the
1 type of each 'locate' database.  You select which database format
1 'updatedb' will use with the '--dbformat' option.
1 

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