1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.1 (2005-??-??) [unstable]
5 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
6 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
7 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
8 conforming to older POSIX versions.
10 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
13 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
19 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
24 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
26 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
28 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
29 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
30 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
32 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
33 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
34 problematic usages. These include:
36 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
37 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
38 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
39 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
40 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
41 tail - main.c tail main.c tail -- - main.c
42 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
43 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
44 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
46 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
47 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
48 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
49 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
51 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
53 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
55 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
56 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
57 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
61 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
63 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
64 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
66 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
67 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
68 blocks until F contains N blocks.
72 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
73 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
77 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
78 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
79 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
83 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
85 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
87 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
91 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
92 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
93 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
95 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
96 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
97 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
98 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
99 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
101 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
105 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
106 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
107 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
109 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
110 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
111 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
112 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
114 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
116 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
117 rather than silently wrapping around.
119 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
120 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
122 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
123 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
125 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
126 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
127 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
130 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
132 ** Improved portability
134 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
135 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
137 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
139 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
140 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
141 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
143 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
144 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
148 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
149 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
151 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
152 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
154 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
155 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
157 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
158 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
160 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now closes it and then reopens it with an
161 unreadable file descriptor. (This step is skipped if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.)
162 This prevents the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
164 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
165 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
166 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
168 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
172 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
174 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
175 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
176 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
178 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
179 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
181 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
182 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
183 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
185 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
186 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
188 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
189 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
190 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
191 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
193 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
194 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
196 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
197 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
198 the file system does not support it.
200 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
202 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
203 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
205 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
207 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
208 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
210 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
211 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
212 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
213 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
215 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
216 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
219 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
220 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
221 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
222 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
224 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
225 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
226 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
227 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
229 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
230 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
232 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
234 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
235 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
236 reporting incorrect results.
240 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
241 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
243 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
244 value happens to be -1.
246 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
248 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
249 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
251 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
252 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
254 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
257 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
258 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
259 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
260 the file name does not look like a page range.
262 printf has several changes:
264 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
265 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
267 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
268 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
269 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
271 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
272 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
275 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
276 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
278 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
279 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
281 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
282 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
284 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
286 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
288 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
289 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
290 when first encountering the directory.
294 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
295 output; POSIX requires this.
297 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
298 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
300 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
302 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
303 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
305 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
306 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
308 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
309 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
310 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
311 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
312 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
313 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
314 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
316 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
317 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
318 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
320 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
321 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
323 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
325 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
327 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
328 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
329 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
330 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
332 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
336 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
337 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
338 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
339 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
340 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
342 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
343 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
344 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
346 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
347 is longer than PATH_MAX.
349 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
350 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
352 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
353 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
354 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
355 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
356 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
358 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
359 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
361 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
362 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
364 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
366 nocreat do not create the output file
367 excl fail if the output file already exists
368 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
369 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
371 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
373 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
374 direct use direct I/O for data
375 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
376 sync likewise, but also for metadata
377 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
378 nofollow do not follow symlinks
379 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
381 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
383 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
384 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
387 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
388 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
389 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
390 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
391 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
392 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
394 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
395 list of NUL-terminated file names.
397 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
400 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
402 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
404 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
405 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
407 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
408 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
409 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
411 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
412 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
413 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
415 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
417 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
418 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
420 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
421 for compatibility with bash.
423 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
425 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
426 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
427 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
428 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
430 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
431 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
433 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
435 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
436 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
437 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
439 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
442 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
444 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
445 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
446 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
447 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
448 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
449 an offset, not as a file name.
451 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
452 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
454 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
455 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
457 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
458 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
460 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
461 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
462 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
464 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
465 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
469 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
471 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
473 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
477 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
478 or more arguments between partitions.
480 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
481 holes in the destination.
483 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
484 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
485 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
486 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
487 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
488 terminates immediately.
490 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
492 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
494 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
495 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
496 not the empty string.
498 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
499 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
503 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
504 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
505 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
508 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
515 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
519 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
520 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
522 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
523 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
525 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
526 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
527 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
530 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
534 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
535 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
537 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
538 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
540 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
541 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
542 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
544 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
546 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
549 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
551 ** Configuration option
553 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
554 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
558 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
559 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
563 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
564 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
565 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
568 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
569 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
570 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
571 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
572 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
573 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
574 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
577 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
581 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
582 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
583 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
585 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
586 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
588 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
590 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
591 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
592 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
593 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
595 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
597 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
598 not just the ones that reference directories
600 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
601 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
603 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
604 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
605 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
607 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
608 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
609 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
610 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
611 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
612 ragged when a datum was too wide.
614 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
619 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
620 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
622 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
624 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
626 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
628 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
629 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
631 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
632 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
634 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
636 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
640 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
642 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
644 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
645 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
646 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
647 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
648 resolution is the best we can do right now.
650 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
651 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
653 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
654 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
656 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
657 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
659 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
660 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
661 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
665 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
666 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
667 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
668 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
669 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
670 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
671 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
672 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
673 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
674 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
675 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
676 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
677 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
678 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
680 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
682 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
683 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
685 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
687 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
689 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
690 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
692 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
694 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
695 without a trailing newline.
697 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
698 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
700 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
703 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
707 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
709 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
711 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
712 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
713 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
714 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
716 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
718 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
719 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
720 be printed without leading spaces.
722 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
723 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
728 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
729 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
730 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
732 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
734 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
735 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
737 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
738 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
740 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
741 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
743 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
745 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
747 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
749 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
750 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
752 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
754 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
756 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
757 byte offsets are specified.
760 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
763 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
766 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
767 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
768 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
769 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
770 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
771 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
772 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
773 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
774 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
775 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
776 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
777 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
778 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
779 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
780 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
781 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
782 directory where M has write access.
783 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
784 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
785 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
788 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
789 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
790 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
791 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
792 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
793 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
794 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
795 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
796 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
797 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
798 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
799 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
800 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
801 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
802 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
803 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
804 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
805 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
806 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
807 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
808 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
809 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
810 appeared one additional time.
812 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
813 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
814 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
815 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
818 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
819 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
820 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
821 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
822 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
823 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
824 if there were more than 338.
826 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
827 - false --help now exits nonzero
830 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
831 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
832 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
833 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
836 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
837 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
838 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
839 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
840 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
843 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
844 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
845 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
846 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
847 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
848 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
849 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
852 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
853 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
854 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
855 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
856 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
857 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
859 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
860 under certain unusual conditions
861 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
862 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
865 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
866 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
867 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
868 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
869 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
870 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
871 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
872 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
873 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
874 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
875 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
876 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
877 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
878 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
879 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
880 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
883 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
884 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
887 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
888 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
889 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
890 involving hard-linked directories
891 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
892 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
893 character-special and block files
896 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
897 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
898 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
899 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
900 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
901 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
902 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
903 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
904 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
906 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
907 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
908 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
909 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
910 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
911 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
912 specified on the command line.
913 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
914 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
915 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
916 the first file untouched.
917 * readlink: new program
918 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
919 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
920 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
921 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
922 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
923 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
926 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
927 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
928 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
929 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
930 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
931 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
932 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
933 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
934 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
935 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
936 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
937 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
939 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
940 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
941 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
943 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
944 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
945 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
946 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
947 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
948 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
949 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
950 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
953 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
954 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
957 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
958 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
959 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
960 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
961 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
962 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
963 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
966 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
967 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
969 ========================================================================
970 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
971 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
974 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
976 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
977 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
978 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
979 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
980 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
981 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
982 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
983 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
984 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
985 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
986 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
987 The old options will continue to work for a while.
989 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
990 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
991 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
992 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
994 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
997 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
999 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1000 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1001 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1002 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1003 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1004 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1005 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1008 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1009 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1010 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1011 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1012 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1013 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1014 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1015 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1016 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1017 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1018 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1019 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1020 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1021 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1022 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1023 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1025 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1026 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1028 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1029 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1030 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1031 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1032 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1033 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1035 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1036 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1037 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1038 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1039 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1040 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1041 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1043 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1044 the source files in the following example:
1045 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1046 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1047 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1048 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1049 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1050 links between source files with --preserve=links
1051 * cp accepts new options:
1052 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1053 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1054 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1055 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1056 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1057 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1058 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1059 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1060 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1062 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1063 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1064 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1065 even though it's older than dest.
1066 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1067 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1068 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1069 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1070 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1072 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1073 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1074 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1075 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1076 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1077 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1078 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1080 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1081 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1082 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1084 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1085 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1086 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1087 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1088 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1089 This is the default.
1091 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1092 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1093 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1094 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1095 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1097 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1100 ========================================================================
1101 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1102 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1105 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1106 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1108 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1109 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1110 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1111 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1112 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1114 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1115 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1116 that specifies a non-directory
1119 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1120 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1121 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1122 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1123 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1124 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1125 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1126 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1127 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1128 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1129 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1130 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1131 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1132 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1133 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1134 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1135 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1136 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1137 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1138 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1139 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1140 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1141 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1142 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1144 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1145 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1146 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1148 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1150 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1151 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1153 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1154 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1155 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1156 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1157 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1159 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1160 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1161 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1162 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1163 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1165 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1167 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1168 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1169 * still more portability fixes
1170 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1171 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1173 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1175 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1177 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1179 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1180 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1181 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1182 there is any time remaining
1183 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1185 ========================================================================
1186 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1187 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1189 This package began as the union of the following:
1190 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.