1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (2006-??-??) [unstable]
7 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
8 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
9 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
11 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
12 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
15 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
16 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
18 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
19 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
21 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
22 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
24 ** Changes in behavior
26 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
27 where the two are distinct.
29 chmod, install, and mkdir now leave a directory's set-user-ID and
30 set-group-ID bits alone unless you explicitly request otherwise.
31 This is for compatibility with BSD and other systems. For example,
32 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
33 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them. If
34 you want to clear the bits you can mention them explicitly, e.g.,
35 `chmod 0755 DIR' and `chmod a-s,u=rwx,go=rx DIR'.
37 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
38 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
39 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
41 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
42 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
43 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
44 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
47 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
48 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
50 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
51 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
52 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by chrooted
53 bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
55 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
56 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
57 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
58 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
59 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
62 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
63 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
65 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
66 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
67 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
68 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
70 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
71 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
72 successful and the output is easier to parse.
74 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
75 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
76 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
77 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
79 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
80 and sticky) with the -m option.
82 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
83 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
84 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
85 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
86 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
88 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
89 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
91 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
95 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
96 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
97 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
98 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
100 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
102 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
104 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
105 silently ignoring one of them.
107 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" when conforming
108 to POSIX 1003.1-2001, since this is a pure extension to POSIX.
109 However, "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
111 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
112 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
113 containing this change was 5.92.
115 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
116 automatically newline terminated.
118 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
119 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
120 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
121 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
124 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
125 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
126 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
129 ** Scheduled for removal
131 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
132 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
134 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
135 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
136 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
137 command to unlink a directory.
139 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
140 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
141 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
142 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
146 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
147 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
148 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
149 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
150 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
154 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
155 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
157 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
159 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
160 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
161 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
163 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
164 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
167 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
168 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
170 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
171 list directories before files.
173 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
174 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
175 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
176 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
179 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
181 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
182 list of NUL-terminated file names.
186 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
187 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
188 usually printing nothing.
190 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
192 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
193 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
194 them with hard-linked directories.
196 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
197 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
198 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
200 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
201 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
202 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
204 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
205 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
207 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
208 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
210 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
211 all command-line arguments.
213 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
215 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
217 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
218 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
220 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
222 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
223 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
224 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
225 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
226 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
228 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
229 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
231 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
232 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
233 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
234 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
236 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
238 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
242 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
243 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
245 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
246 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
248 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
249 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
251 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
252 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
254 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
255 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
257 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
259 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
260 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
261 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
264 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
266 ** Build-related bug fixes
268 installing .mo files would fail
271 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
275 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
277 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
280 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
284 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
285 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
289 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
291 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
292 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
294 ** Deprecated options
296 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
297 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
299 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
303 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
305 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
306 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
307 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
308 conforming to older POSIX versions.
310 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
313 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
319 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
324 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
326 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
328 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
329 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
330 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
332 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
333 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
334 problematic usages. These include:
336 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
337 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
338 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
339 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
340 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
341 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
342 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
343 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
344 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
346 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
347 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
349 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
350 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
351 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
352 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
354 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
355 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
356 between binary and text files.
358 The following programs now always use text input/output:
362 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
366 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
367 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
370 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
372 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
373 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
375 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
376 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
377 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
379 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
381 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
383 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
384 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
385 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
389 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
391 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
392 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
394 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
395 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
396 blocks until F contains N blocks.
400 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
401 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
405 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
406 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
407 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
411 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
412 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
416 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
418 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
420 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
424 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
425 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
426 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
428 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
429 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
430 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
431 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
432 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
434 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
438 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
439 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
440 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
442 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
444 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
445 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
446 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
447 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
449 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
451 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
452 rather than silently wrapping around.
454 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
455 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
457 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
458 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
460 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
461 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
462 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
465 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
467 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
469 ** Improved robustness
471 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
472 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
473 no matter how large the result.
475 ** Improved portability
477 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
478 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
480 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
482 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
483 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
484 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
486 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
487 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
491 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
492 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
494 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
496 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
497 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
498 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
499 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
501 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
502 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
504 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
505 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
506 categories if not specified by dircolors.
508 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
510 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
511 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
513 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
514 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
516 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
518 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
519 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
521 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
522 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
524 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
525 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
526 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
528 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
530 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
532 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
536 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
538 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
539 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
540 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
542 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
543 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
545 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
546 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
547 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
549 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
550 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
552 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
553 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
554 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
555 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
557 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
558 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
560 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
561 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
562 the file system does not support it.
564 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
566 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
567 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
569 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
571 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
572 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
574 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
575 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
576 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
577 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
579 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
580 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
583 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
584 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
585 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
586 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
588 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
589 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
590 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
591 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
593 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
594 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
596 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
598 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
599 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
600 reporting incorrect results.
604 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
605 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
607 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
610 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
612 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
613 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
615 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
616 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
618 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
621 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
622 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
623 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
624 the file name does not look like a page range.
626 printf has several changes:
628 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
629 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
631 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
632 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
633 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
635 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
636 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
639 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
640 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
642 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
643 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
645 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
647 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
648 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
650 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
652 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
654 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
655 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
656 when first encountering the directory.
660 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
661 output; POSIX requires this.
663 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
664 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
666 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
668 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
669 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
671 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
672 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
674 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
675 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
676 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
677 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
678 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
679 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
680 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
682 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
683 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
684 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
686 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
687 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
689 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
691 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
693 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
694 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
695 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
696 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
698 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
702 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
703 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
704 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
705 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
706 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
708 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
709 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
710 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
712 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
713 is longer than PATH_MAX.
715 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
716 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
718 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
719 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
720 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
721 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
722 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
724 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
725 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
727 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
728 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
730 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
732 nocreat do not create the output file
733 excl fail if the output file already exists
734 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
735 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
737 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
739 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
740 direct use direct I/O for data
741 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
742 sync likewise, but also for metadata
743 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
744 nofollow do not follow symlinks
745 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
747 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
749 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
750 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
753 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
754 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
755 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
756 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
757 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
758 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
760 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
761 list of NUL-terminated file names.
763 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
766 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
768 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
770 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
771 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
773 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
774 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
775 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
777 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
778 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
779 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
781 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
783 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
784 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
786 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
787 for compatibility with bash.
789 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
791 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
792 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
793 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
794 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
796 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
797 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
799 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
801 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
802 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
803 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
805 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
808 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
810 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
811 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
812 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
813 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
814 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
815 an offset, not as a file name.
817 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
818 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
820 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
821 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
823 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
824 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
826 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
827 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
828 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
830 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
831 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
833 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
834 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
838 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
840 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
842 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
846 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
847 or more arguments between partitions.
849 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
850 holes in the destination.
852 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
853 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
854 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
855 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
856 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
857 terminates immediately.
859 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
861 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
863 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
864 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
865 not the empty string.
867 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
868 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
872 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
873 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
874 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
877 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
884 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
888 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
889 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
891 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
892 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
894 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
895 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
896 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
899 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
903 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
904 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
906 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
907 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
909 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
910 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
911 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
913 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
915 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
918 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
920 ** Configuration option
922 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
923 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
927 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
928 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
932 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
933 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
934 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
937 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
938 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
939 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
940 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
941 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
942 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
943 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
946 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
950 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
951 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
952 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
954 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
955 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
957 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
959 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
960 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
961 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
962 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
964 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
966 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
967 not just the ones that reference directories
969 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
970 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
972 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
973 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
974 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
976 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
977 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
978 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
979 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
980 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
981 ragged when a datum was too wide.
983 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
988 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
989 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
991 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
993 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
995 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
997 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
998 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1000 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1001 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1003 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1005 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1009 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1011 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1013 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1014 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1015 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1016 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1017 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1019 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1020 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1022 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1023 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1025 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1026 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1028 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1029 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1030 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1034 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1035 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1036 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1037 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1038 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1039 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1040 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1041 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1042 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1043 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1044 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1045 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1046 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1047 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1049 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1051 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1052 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1054 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1056 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1058 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1059 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1061 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1063 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1064 without a trailing newline.
1066 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1067 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1069 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1072 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1076 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1078 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1080 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1081 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1082 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1083 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1085 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1087 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1088 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1089 be printed without leading spaces.
1091 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1092 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1097 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1098 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1099 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1101 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1103 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1104 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1106 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1107 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1109 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1110 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1112 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1114 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1116 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1118 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1119 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1121 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1123 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1125 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1126 byte offsets are specified.
1129 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1132 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1135 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1136 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1137 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1138 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1139 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1140 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1141 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1142 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1143 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1144 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1145 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1146 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1147 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1148 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1149 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1150 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1151 directory where M has write access.
1152 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1153 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1154 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1157 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1158 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1159 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1160 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1161 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1162 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1163 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1164 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1165 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1166 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1167 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1168 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1169 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1170 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1171 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1172 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1173 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1174 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1175 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1176 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1177 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1178 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1179 appeared one additional time.
1181 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1182 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1183 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1184 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1187 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1188 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1189 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1190 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1191 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1192 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1193 if there were more than 338.
1195 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1196 - false --help now exits nonzero
1199 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1200 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1201 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1202 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1205 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1206 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1207 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1208 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1209 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1212 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1213 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1214 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1215 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1216 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1217 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1218 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1221 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1222 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1223 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1224 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1225 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1226 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1228 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1229 under certain unusual conditions
1230 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1231 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1234 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1235 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1236 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1237 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1238 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1239 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1240 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1241 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1242 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1243 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1244 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1245 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1246 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1247 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1248 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1249 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1252 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1253 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1256 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1257 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1258 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1259 involving hard-linked directories
1260 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1261 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1262 character-special and block files
1265 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1266 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1267 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1268 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1269 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1270 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1271 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1272 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1273 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1275 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1276 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1277 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1278 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1279 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1280 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1281 specified on the command line.
1282 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1283 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1284 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1285 the first file untouched.
1286 * readlink: new program
1287 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1288 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1289 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1290 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1291 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1292 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1295 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1296 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1297 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1298 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1299 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1300 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1301 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1302 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1303 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1304 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1305 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1306 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1308 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1309 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1310 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1312 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1313 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1314 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1315 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1316 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1317 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1318 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1319 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1322 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1323 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1326 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1327 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1328 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1329 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1330 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1331 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1332 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1335 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1336 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1338 ========================================================================
1339 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1340 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1343 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1345 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1346 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1347 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1348 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1349 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1350 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1351 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1352 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1353 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1354 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1355 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1356 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1358 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1359 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1360 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1361 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1363 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1366 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1368 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1369 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1370 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1371 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1372 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1373 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1374 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1377 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1378 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1379 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1380 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1381 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1382 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1383 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1384 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1385 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1386 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1387 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1388 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1389 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1390 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1391 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1392 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1394 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1395 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1397 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1398 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1399 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1400 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1401 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1402 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1404 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1405 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1406 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1407 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1408 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1409 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1410 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1412 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1413 the source files in the following example:
1414 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1415 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1416 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1417 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1418 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1419 links between source files with --preserve=links
1420 * cp accepts new options:
1421 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1422 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1423 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1424 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1425 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1426 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1427 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1428 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1429 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1431 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1432 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1433 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1434 even though it's older than dest.
1435 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1436 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1437 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1438 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1439 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1441 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1442 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1443 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1444 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1445 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1446 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1447 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1449 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1450 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1451 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1453 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1454 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1455 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1456 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1457 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1458 This is the default.
1460 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1461 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1462 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1463 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1464 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1466 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1469 ========================================================================
1470 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1471 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1474 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1475 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1477 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1478 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1479 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1480 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1481 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1483 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1484 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1485 that specifies a non-directory
1488 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1489 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1490 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1491 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1492 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1493 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1494 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1495 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1496 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1497 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1498 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1499 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1500 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1501 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1502 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1503 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1504 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1505 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1506 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1507 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1508 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1509 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1510 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1511 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1513 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1514 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1515 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1517 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1519 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1520 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1522 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1523 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1524 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1525 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1526 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1528 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1529 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1530 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1531 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1532 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1534 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1536 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1537 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1538 * still more portability fixes
1539 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1540 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1542 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1544 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1546 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1548 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1549 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1550 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1551 there is any time remaining
1552 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1554 ========================================================================
1555 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1556 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1558 This package began as the union of the following:
1559 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.