1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
8 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
9 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
11 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
12 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
13 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
14 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
18 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
19 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
20 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
21 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
24 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
28 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
30 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
31 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
32 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
35 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
39 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
40 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
42 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
44 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
46 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
48 ** Programs no longer installed by default
52 ** Changes in behavior
54 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
55 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
57 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
58 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
60 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
61 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
62 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
66 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
67 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
68 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
69 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
70 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
71 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
72 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
73 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
74 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
75 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
76 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
78 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
81 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
82 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
83 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
85 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
86 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
87 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
92 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
93 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
94 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
95 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
97 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
98 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
99 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
100 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
101 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
102 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
103 of "make check" fail.
105 ** Remove deprecated options
107 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
108 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
109 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
110 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
111 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
113 ** Improved robustness
115 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
116 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
117 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
118 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
119 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
120 loss of the contents of a/f.
122 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
123 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
127 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
128 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
129 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
131 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
132 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
133 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
134 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
136 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
137 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
138 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
139 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
140 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
141 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
142 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
143 destination is a symlink.
145 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
147 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
148 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
150 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
151 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
153 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
155 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
156 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
158 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
159 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
161 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
164 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
165 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
167 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
168 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
170 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
171 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
172 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
173 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
175 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
176 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
177 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
179 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
180 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
181 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
183 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
184 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
185 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
186 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
188 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
189 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
190 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
192 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
193 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
195 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
196 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
198 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
200 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
201 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
202 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
204 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
205 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
207 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
208 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
210 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
211 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
213 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
214 [present in the original version]
217 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
221 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
223 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
224 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
225 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
227 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
228 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
230 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
234 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
235 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
237 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
238 support but with insufficient /proc support.
240 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
241 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
243 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
244 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
245 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
246 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
247 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
248 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
250 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
251 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
254 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
255 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
257 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
260 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
261 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
262 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
264 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
265 directory is unreadable.
267 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
268 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
269 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
271 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
272 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
273 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
274 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
275 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
278 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
279 Before it would print nothing.
281 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
283 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
284 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
285 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
286 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
287 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
288 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
289 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
290 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
292 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
296 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
297 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
298 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
300 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
301 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
302 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
303 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
306 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
310 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
311 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
312 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
313 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
314 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
315 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
316 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
318 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
319 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
320 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
321 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
322 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
323 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
324 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
325 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
327 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
328 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
329 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
332 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
336 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
337 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
339 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
340 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
341 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
343 ** Improved robustness
345 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
346 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
347 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
350 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
354 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
355 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
356 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
357 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
358 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
360 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
364 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
367 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
371 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
372 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
373 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
374 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
376 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
377 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
379 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
380 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
381 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
384 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
386 ** Improved robustness
388 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
389 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
391 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
392 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
393 or NFS-mounted partition.
395 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
396 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
400 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
401 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
402 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
403 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
404 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
405 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
407 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
408 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
410 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
411 or neglect to report file removal.
413 For the "groups" command:
415 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
416 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
418 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
420 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
422 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
426 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
427 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
430 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
432 ** Changes in behavior
434 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
435 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
436 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
437 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
439 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
440 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
441 a final `./' or `../' component.
443 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
444 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
447 ** Infrastructure changes
449 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
450 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
451 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
452 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
456 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
459 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
460 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
461 dirent.d_type support.
463 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
464 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
466 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
467 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
468 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
469 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
472 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
474 ** Changes in behavior
476 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
480 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
481 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
485 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
486 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
487 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
489 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
490 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
492 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
493 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
495 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
497 ** Improved robustness
499 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
500 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
501 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
503 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
504 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
507 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
508 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
510 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
511 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
513 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
514 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
516 ** Changes in behavior
518 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
519 where the two are distinct.
521 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
522 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
523 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
524 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
525 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
526 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
527 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
528 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
529 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
530 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
531 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
532 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
533 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
534 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
535 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
536 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
537 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
539 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
540 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
541 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
543 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
544 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
545 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
546 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
549 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
550 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
554 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
555 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
556 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
557 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
559 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
560 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
561 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
563 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
564 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
565 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
566 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
567 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
570 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
571 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
573 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
574 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
575 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
576 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
578 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
579 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
580 successful and the output is easier to parse.
582 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
583 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
584 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
585 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
587 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
588 and sticky) with the -m option.
590 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
591 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
592 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
593 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
594 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
596 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
597 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
599 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
603 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
604 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
605 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
606 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
608 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
610 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
612 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
613 silently ignoring one of them.
615 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
616 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
617 containing this change was 5.92.
619 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
620 automatically newline terminated.
622 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
623 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
624 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
625 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
628 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
629 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
630 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
633 ** Scheduled for removal
635 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
636 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
638 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
639 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
640 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
641 command to unlink a directory.
643 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
644 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
645 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
646 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
650 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
651 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
652 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
653 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
654 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
655 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
659 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
660 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
662 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
664 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
665 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
666 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
668 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
669 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
672 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
673 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
675 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
676 list directories before files.
678 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
679 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
680 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
681 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
684 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
686 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
688 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
689 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
690 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
692 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
693 list of NUL-terminated file names.
697 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
698 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
699 usually printing nothing.
701 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
703 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
704 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
705 them with hard-linked directories.
707 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
708 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
709 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
711 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
712 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
713 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
715 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
718 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
719 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
721 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
722 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
724 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
725 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
727 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
728 all command-line arguments.
730 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
732 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
734 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
735 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
737 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
739 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
740 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
741 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
742 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
743 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
745 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
746 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
748 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
749 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
750 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
751 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
753 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
755 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
759 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
760 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
762 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
763 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
765 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
766 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
768 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
769 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
771 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
772 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
774 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
776 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
777 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
778 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
781 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
783 ** Build-related bug fixes
785 installing .mo files would fail
788 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
792 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
794 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
797 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
801 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
802 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
806 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
808 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
809 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
811 ** Deprecated options
813 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
814 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
816 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
820 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
822 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
823 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
824 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
825 conforming to older POSIX versions.
827 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
830 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
836 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
841 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
843 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
845 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
846 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
847 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
849 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
850 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
851 problematic usages. These include:
853 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
854 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
855 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
856 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
857 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
858 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
859 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
860 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
861 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
863 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
864 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
866 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
867 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
868 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
869 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
871 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
872 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
873 between binary and text files.
875 The following programs now always use text input/output:
879 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
883 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
884 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
887 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
889 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
890 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
892 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
893 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
894 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
896 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
898 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
900 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
901 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
902 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
906 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
908 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
909 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
911 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
912 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
913 blocks until F contains N blocks.
917 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
918 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
922 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
923 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
924 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
928 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
929 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
933 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
935 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
937 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
941 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
942 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
943 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
945 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
946 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
947 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
948 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
949 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
951 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
955 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
956 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
957 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
959 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
961 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
962 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
963 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
964 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
966 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
968 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
969 rather than silently wrapping around.
971 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
972 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
974 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
975 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
977 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
978 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
979 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
982 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
984 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
986 ** Improved robustness
988 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
989 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
990 no matter how large the result.
992 ** Improved portability
994 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
995 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
997 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
999 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1000 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1001 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1003 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1004 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1008 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1009 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1011 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1013 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1014 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1015 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1016 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1018 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1019 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1021 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1022 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1023 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1025 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1027 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1028 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1030 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1031 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1033 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1035 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1036 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1038 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1039 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1041 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1042 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1043 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1045 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1047 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1049 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1053 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1055 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1056 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1057 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1059 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1060 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1062 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1063 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1064 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1066 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1067 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1069 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1070 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1071 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1072 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1074 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1075 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1077 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1078 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1079 the file system does not support it.
1081 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1083 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1084 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1086 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1088 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1089 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1091 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1092 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1093 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1094 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1096 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1097 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1100 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1101 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1102 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1103 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1105 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1106 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1107 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1108 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1110 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1111 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1113 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1115 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1116 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1117 reporting incorrect results.
1121 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1122 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1124 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1127 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1129 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1130 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1132 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1133 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1135 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1138 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1139 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1140 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1141 the file name does not look like a page range.
1143 printf has several changes:
1145 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1146 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1148 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1149 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1150 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1152 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1153 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1156 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1157 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1159 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1160 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1162 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1164 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1165 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1167 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1169 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1171 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1172 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1173 when first encountering the directory.
1177 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1178 output; POSIX requires this.
1180 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1181 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1183 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1185 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1186 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1188 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1189 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1191 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1192 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1193 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1194 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1195 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1196 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1197 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1199 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1200 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1201 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1203 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1204 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1206 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1208 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1210 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1211 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1212 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1213 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1215 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1219 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1220 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1221 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1222 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1223 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1225 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1226 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1227 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1229 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1230 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1232 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1233 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1235 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1236 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1237 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1238 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1239 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1241 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1242 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1244 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1245 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1247 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1249 nocreat do not create the output file
1250 excl fail if the output file already exists
1251 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1252 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1254 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1256 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1257 direct use direct I/O for data
1258 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1259 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1260 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1261 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1262 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1264 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1266 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1267 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1270 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1271 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1272 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1273 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1274 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1275 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1277 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1278 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1280 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1283 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1285 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1287 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1288 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1290 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1291 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1292 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1294 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1295 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1296 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1298 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1300 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1301 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1303 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1304 for compatibility with bash.
1306 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1308 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1309 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1310 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1311 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1313 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1314 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1316 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1317 ls supports TABSIZE.
1318 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1319 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1320 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1322 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1325 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1327 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1328 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1329 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1330 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1331 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1332 an offset, not as a file name.
1334 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1335 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1337 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1338 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1340 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1341 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1343 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1344 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1345 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1347 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1348 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1350 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1351 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1355 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1357 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1359 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1363 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1364 or more arguments between partitions.
1366 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1367 holes in the destination.
1369 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1370 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1371 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1372 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1373 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1374 terminates immediately.
1376 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1378 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1380 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1381 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1382 not the empty string.
1384 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1385 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1389 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1390 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1391 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1394 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1401 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1405 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1406 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1408 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1409 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1411 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1412 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1413 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1416 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1420 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1421 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1423 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1424 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1426 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1427 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1428 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1430 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1432 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1435 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1437 ** Configuration option
1439 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1440 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1444 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1445 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1449 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1450 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1451 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1454 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1455 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1456 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1457 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1458 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1459 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1460 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1463 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1467 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1468 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1469 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1471 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1472 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1474 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1476 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1477 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1478 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1479 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1481 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1483 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1484 not just the ones that reference directories
1486 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1487 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1489 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1490 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1491 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1493 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1494 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1495 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1496 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1497 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1498 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1500 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1505 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1506 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1508 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1510 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1512 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1514 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1515 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1517 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1518 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1520 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1522 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1526 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1528 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1530 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1531 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1532 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1533 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1534 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1536 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1537 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1539 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1540 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1542 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1543 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1545 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1546 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1547 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1551 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1552 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1553 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1554 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1555 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1556 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1557 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1558 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1559 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1560 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1561 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1562 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1563 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1564 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1566 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1568 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1569 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1571 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1573 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1575 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1576 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1578 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1580 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1581 without a trailing newline.
1583 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1584 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1586 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1589 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1593 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1595 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1597 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1598 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1599 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1600 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1602 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1604 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1605 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1606 be printed without leading spaces.
1608 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1609 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1614 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1615 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1616 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1618 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1620 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1621 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1623 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1624 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1626 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1627 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1629 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1631 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1633 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1635 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1636 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1638 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1640 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1642 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1643 byte offsets are specified.
1646 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1649 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1652 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1653 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1654 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1655 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1656 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1657 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1658 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1659 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1660 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1661 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1662 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1663 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1664 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1665 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1666 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1667 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1668 directory where M has write access.
1669 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1670 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1671 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1674 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1675 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1676 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1677 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1678 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1679 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1680 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1681 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1682 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1683 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1684 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1685 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1686 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1687 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1688 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1689 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1690 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1691 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1692 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1693 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1694 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1695 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1696 appeared one additional time.
1698 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1699 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1700 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1701 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1704 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1705 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1706 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1707 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1708 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1709 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1710 if there were more than 338.
1712 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1713 - false --help now exits nonzero
1716 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1717 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1718 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1719 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1722 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1723 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1724 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1725 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1726 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1729 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1730 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1731 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1732 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1733 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1734 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1735 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1738 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1739 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1740 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1741 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1742 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1743 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1745 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1746 under certain unusual conditions
1747 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1748 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1751 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1752 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1753 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1754 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1755 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1756 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1757 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1758 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1759 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1760 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1761 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1762 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1763 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1764 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1765 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1766 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1769 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1770 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1773 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1774 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1775 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1776 involving hard-linked directories
1777 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1778 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1779 character-special and block files
1782 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1783 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1784 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1785 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1786 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1787 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1788 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1789 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1790 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1792 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1793 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1794 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1795 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1796 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1797 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1798 specified on the command line.
1799 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1800 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1801 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1802 the first file untouched.
1803 * readlink: new program
1804 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1805 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1806 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1807 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1808 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1809 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1812 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1813 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1814 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1815 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1816 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1817 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1818 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1819 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1820 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1821 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1822 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1823 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1825 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1826 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1827 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1829 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1830 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1831 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1832 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1833 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1834 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1835 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1836 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1839 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1840 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1843 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1844 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1845 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1846 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1847 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1848 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1849 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1852 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1853 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1855 ========================================================================
1856 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1857 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1860 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1862 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1863 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1864 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1865 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1866 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1867 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1868 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1869 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1870 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1871 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1872 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1873 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1875 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1876 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1877 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1878 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1880 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1883 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1885 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1886 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1887 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1888 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1889 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1890 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1891 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1894 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1895 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1896 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1897 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1898 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1899 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1900 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1901 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1902 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1903 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1904 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1905 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1906 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1907 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1908 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1909 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1911 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1912 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1914 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1915 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1916 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1917 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1918 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1919 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1921 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1922 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1923 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1924 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1925 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1926 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1927 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1929 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1930 the source files in the following example:
1931 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1932 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1933 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1934 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1935 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1936 links between source files with --preserve=links
1937 * cp accepts new options:
1938 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1939 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1940 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1941 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1942 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1943 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1944 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1945 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1946 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1948 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1949 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1950 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1951 even though it's older than dest.
1952 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1953 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1954 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1955 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1956 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1958 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1959 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1960 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1961 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1962 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1963 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1964 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1966 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1967 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1968 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1970 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1971 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1972 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1973 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1974 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1975 This is the default.
1977 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1978 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1979 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1980 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1981 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1983 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1986 ========================================================================
1987 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1988 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1991 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1992 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1994 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1995 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1996 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1997 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1998 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2000 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2001 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2002 that specifies a non-directory
2005 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2006 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2007 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2008 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2009 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2010 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2011 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2012 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2013 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2014 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2015 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2016 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2017 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2018 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2019 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2020 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2021 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2022 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2023 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2024 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2025 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2026 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2027 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2028 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2030 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2031 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2032 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2034 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2036 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2037 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2039 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2040 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2041 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2042 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2043 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2045 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2046 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2047 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2048 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2049 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2051 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2053 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2054 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2055 * still more portability fixes
2056 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2057 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2059 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2061 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2063 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2065 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2066 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2067 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2068 there is any time remaining
2069 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2071 ========================================================================
2072 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2073 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2075 This package began as the union of the following:
2076 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2078 ========================================================================
2080 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2083 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2084 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2085 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2086 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2087 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2088 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.