find: warning: you have specified the global option -maxdepth after the argument -name

GNU find prints find: warning: you have specified the global option -maxdepth after the argument -name, but global options are not positional... when -maxdepth comes after a test. The command still runs and gives the same result, because global options apply to the whole expression wherever they are written; find warns because the position suggests otherwise. Put -maxdepth right after the path: find . -maxdepth 1 -name '*.log'. The exit status is unaffected.

Reproduce the warning

GNU find enables warnings by default only when standard input is a terminal. The runner has no terminal, so this example turns them on with -warn:

mkdir -p logs/old
touch logs/app.log logs/old/2025.log
find logs -warn -name '*.log' -maxdepth 1

find: warning: you have specified the global option -maxdepth after the argument -name, but global options are not positional, i.e., -maxdepth affects tests specified before it as well as those specified after it.  Please specify global options before other arguments.
logs/app.log

Only logs/app.log is printed: -maxdepth 1 limited the search even though it was written after -name.

Fix: global options first

mkdir -p logs/old
touch logs/app.log logs/old/2025.log
find logs -warn -maxdepth 1 -name '*.log'
find logs -warn -mindepth 2 -type f

logs/app.log
logs/old/2025.log

No warning, same result for the first command.

Which options are global

Positional options such as -daystart, -follow, -regextype, -warn and -nowarn affect only the tests that come after them, so their place in the expression matters. Tests (-name, -type, -mtime) and actions (-print, -exec, -delete) are evaluated left to right.