infinite loop with -follow. $ mkdir testingfindagain $ ln -s . testingfindagain/symlink $ ./find testingfindagain -follow will generate an endless loop. (For testing I suggest piping into head -c 200, otherwise you might trigger OOM) The expected output is ./find: Symbolic link `testingfindagain/symlink' is part of a loop in the directory hierarchy; we have already visited the directory to which it points. testingfindagain testingfindagain/symlink