Difference between Mac `find` and Linux `find` [closed]

Question

I have inherited a script as part of a build process for an application, and when I run it on the build server (Ubuntu Precise) it runs fine, but when I run it on my mac I get "illegal option -- t". The command that has problems is simple, it's just a call to find:

find -type f -not -path [...]

On testing I have discovered that it is the -type option that has trouble on my Mac. If I run instead:

find ./ -type f -not -path [...]

It works, yet both work (seemingly equivalently) on the Linux box. Therefore my question is, are there significant differences between OSX's (BSD) find binary and the Linux (GNU?) find and will my modification to the script (adding the ./ path at the start) break anything that I haven't discovered yet?

Answer 1

The standard mandates the path (./ in your example) to be mandatory. find on MacOS follows the standard.

GNU find (the one available on Linux) allows the path to be optional. If not specified, the current directory is assumed to be the path. On Linux, man find says

find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-D debugopts] [-Olevel] [path...] [expression]

(note that path is specified within [...] denoting that it is optional.

It is a good practice to specify the path.