1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 ls's -k option no longer affects how ls -l outputs file sizes.
8 It now affects only the per-directory block counts written by -l,
9 and the sizes written by -s. This is for compatibility with BSD
10 and with POSIX 2008. Because -k is no longer equivalent to
11 --block-size=1KiB, a new long option --kibibyte stands for -k.
12 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.4]
14 rm -rf DIR would fail with "Device or resource busy" on Cygwin with NWFS
15 and NcFsd file systems. This did not affect Unix/Linux-based kernels.
16 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0, when rm began using fts]
18 tac no longer fails to handle two or more non-seekable inputs
19 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
21 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on GPFS file systems
22 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
23 support, but the GPFS magic number wasn't in the usual places then.]
26 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.14 (2011-10-12) [stable]
30 ls --dereference no longer outputs erroneous "argetm" strings for
31 dangling symlinks when an 'ln=target' entry is in $LS_COLORS.
32 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
34 ls -lL symlink once again properly prints "+" when the referent has an ACL.
35 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.13]
37 sort -g no longer infloops for certain inputs containing NaNs
38 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
42 md5sum --check now supports the -r format from the corresponding BSD tool.
43 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
45 pwd now works also on systems without openat. On such systems, pwd
46 would fail when run from a directory whose absolute name contained
47 more than PATH_MAX / 3 components. The df, stat and readlink programs
48 are also affected due to their use of the canonicalize_* functions.
50 ** Changes in behavior
52 timeout now only processes the first signal received from the set
53 it is handling (SIGTERM, SIGINT, ...). This is to support systems that
54 implicitly create threads for some timer functions (like GNU/kFreeBSD).
58 "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files.
59 xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing
60 only .tar.xz files is enough.
63 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.13 (2011-09-08) [stable]
67 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
68 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
69 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
71 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
72 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
74 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
75 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
76 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
77 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
78 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
80 fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
81 proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
82 Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
83 Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
84 [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
85 introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
86 as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
87 chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
89 pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at.
90 [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q]
92 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
93 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
95 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
96 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
98 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
99 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
100 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
102 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
103 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
104 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
105 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
107 ** Changes in behavior
109 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
110 when -v or -c specified.
112 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
113 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
117 date now accepts ISO 8601 date-time strings with "T" as the
118 separator. It has long parsed dates like "2004-02-29 16:21:42"
119 with a space between the date and time strings. Now it also parses
120 "2004-02-29T16:21:42" and fractional-second and time-zone-annotated
121 variants like "2004-02-29T16:21:42.333-07:00"
123 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
124 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
125 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
127 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
128 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
129 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
130 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
131 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
132 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
133 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
135 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
136 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
137 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
141 cp -p now copies trivial NSFv4 ACLs on Solaris 10. Before, it would
142 mistakenly apply a non-trivial ACL to the destination file.
144 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
147 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
148 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
150 join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
151 unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
153 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
154 For example `shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2` no longer exhausts memory.
156 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
158 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
162 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
163 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
165 Numerous portability and build improvements inherited via gnulib.
168 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
172 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
173 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
175 ** Changes in behavior
177 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
178 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
179 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
180 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
181 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
182 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
184 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
185 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
186 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
190 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
193 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
197 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
198 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
199 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
201 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
202 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
203 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
205 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
206 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
207 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
209 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
210 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
212 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
213 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
215 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
216 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
218 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
219 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
223 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
224 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
225 processed portion thereof.
227 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
228 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
230 ** Changes in behavior
232 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
233 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
234 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
236 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
237 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
238 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
240 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
241 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
243 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
244 Use --preserve-context instead.
246 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
249 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
253 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
254 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
255 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
256 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
257 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
259 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
260 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
262 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
263 reject file names invalid for that file system.
265 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
266 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
270 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
271 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
272 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
273 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
274 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
275 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
276 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
277 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
279 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
280 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
281 the same number of fields are output for each line.
283 ** Changes in behavior
285 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
286 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
287 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
290 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
294 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
295 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
296 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
299 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
303 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
304 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
306 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
307 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
309 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
310 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
312 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
313 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
314 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
315 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
317 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
318 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
320 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
321 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
322 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
324 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
326 ** Changes in behavior
328 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
329 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
330 to the number of available processors.
334 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
337 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
341 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
342 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
343 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
344 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
346 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
347 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
348 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
350 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
351 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
353 ** Changes in behavior
355 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
356 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
358 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
359 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
360 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
361 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
362 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
363 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
365 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
366 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
367 the same way as the others.
370 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
374 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
375 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
376 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
378 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
379 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
381 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
382 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
383 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
385 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
386 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
388 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
389 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
391 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
392 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
393 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
395 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
396 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
397 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
398 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
402 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
403 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
405 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
408 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
409 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
411 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
413 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
414 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
415 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
417 ** Changes in behavior
419 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
420 rather than its aliased target.
422 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
423 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
424 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
426 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
427 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
428 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
429 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
430 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
431 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
432 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
433 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
435 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
437 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
439 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
440 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
443 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
444 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
445 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
446 control like taskset for example.
448 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
450 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
451 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
452 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
453 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
454 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
455 includes %C when context information is available.
457 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
458 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
459 rather than a file system attribute.
461 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
462 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
463 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
464 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
466 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
467 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
468 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
470 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
471 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
472 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
475 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
479 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
480 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
482 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
484 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
485 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
487 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
488 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
489 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
490 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
492 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
493 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
494 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
498 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
499 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
501 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
502 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
503 duration after the initial signal was sent.
505 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
506 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
507 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
508 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
509 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
510 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
511 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
512 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
513 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
515 ** Changes in behavior
517 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
518 sequence when it would be a no-op.
520 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
521 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
524 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
528 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
529 of available processors, which may not have been the case
530 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
531 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
535 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
536 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
538 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
539 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
540 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
541 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
543 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
544 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
545 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
548 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
552 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
553 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
554 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
556 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
557 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
558 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
560 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
561 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
563 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
564 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
565 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
566 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
568 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
569 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
570 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
572 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
573 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
574 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
575 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
577 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
578 renamed-aside and then recreated.
579 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
581 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
582 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
583 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
584 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
586 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
587 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
588 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
590 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
591 processes will not intersperse their output.
592 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
595 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
599 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
600 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
602 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
603 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
605 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
606 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
607 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
608 the presence of the empty string argument.
609 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
611 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
612 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
613 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
614 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
616 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
617 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
619 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
620 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
621 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
623 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
624 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
625 and with a malicious user on the same system
626 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
627 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
630 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
634 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
635 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
636 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
638 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
639 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
640 offending directory and all "contents."
642 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
643 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
644 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
646 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
647 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
648 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
650 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
651 processes will not intersperse their output.
652 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
653 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
655 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
656 output the name of the file to stdout.
657 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
659 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
660 call fails with errno == EACCES.
661 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
663 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
664 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
667 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
668 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
669 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
671 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
672 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
673 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
674 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
675 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
676 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
678 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
679 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
680 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
681 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
683 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
684 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
686 ** Changes in behavior
688 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
689 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
690 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
691 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
692 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
694 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
695 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
696 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
697 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
699 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
701 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
702 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
703 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
704 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
705 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
709 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
713 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
714 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
716 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
717 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
719 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
720 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
721 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
723 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
724 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
727 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
731 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
732 when the source file doesn't have write access.
733 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
735 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
736 to accommodate leap seconds.
737 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
739 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
740 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
741 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
743 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
745 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
746 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
747 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
749 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
750 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
751 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
752 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
753 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
757 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
758 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
759 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
760 directory or a symlink to a directory.
762 ** Changes in behavior
764 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
765 environment variable is set.
767 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
768 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
769 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
773 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
774 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
775 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
776 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
778 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
779 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
780 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
781 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
785 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
786 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
787 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
789 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
790 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
791 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
792 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
793 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
794 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
797 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
798 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
801 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
805 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
806 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
807 and libraries tested at configure time.
808 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
810 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
811 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
813 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
814 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
816 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
817 printing a summary to stderr.
818 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
820 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
821 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
822 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
824 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
825 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
827 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
828 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
829 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
830 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
832 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
833 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
834 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
835 which is relatively unusual.
836 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
838 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
839 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
840 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
841 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
842 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
843 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
844 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
848 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
849 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
850 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
851 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
852 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
856 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
857 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
859 ** Changes in behavior
861 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
862 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
863 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
864 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
865 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
868 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
872 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
873 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
875 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
876 before data copying has started.
878 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
879 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
881 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
882 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
883 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
884 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
886 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
887 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
888 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
889 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
891 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
896 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
897 for its standard streams.
899 ** Changes in behavior
901 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
902 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
903 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
904 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
905 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
906 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
908 ** Deprecated options
910 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
911 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
915 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
917 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
918 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
921 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
923 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
924 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
926 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
927 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
930 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
934 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
935 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
936 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
937 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
939 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
940 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
941 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
942 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
943 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
948 make check: two tests have been corrected
952 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
953 inherited from gnulib.
956 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
960 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
961 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
962 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
963 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
965 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
966 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
968 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
970 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
971 systems without xattr support.
973 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
974 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
975 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
977 ** Changes in behavior
979 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
980 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
981 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
982 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
984 ** Improved robustness
986 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
987 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
988 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
989 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
990 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
991 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
992 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
993 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
994 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
998 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
999 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
1001 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
1002 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
1003 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
1004 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1005 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1008 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
1012 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
1013 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
1014 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
1018 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
1019 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
1020 data was read, or on process exit.
1021 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1023 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
1024 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
1025 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
1026 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1028 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
1029 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
1030 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
1031 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1033 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
1034 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
1036 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
1037 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1039 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
1040 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
1041 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
1043 ** Changes in behavior
1045 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
1046 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
1047 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
1049 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
1050 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
1052 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
1053 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
1054 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
1057 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
1061 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
1063 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
1064 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
1065 install: Never copies xattrs
1067 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
1068 from overwriting any existing destination file
1070 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
1071 mode where this feature is available.
1073 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
1074 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
1075 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
1076 do not modify the destination at all.
1078 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
1080 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
1084 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
1085 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1087 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1089 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1090 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1092 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1093 processing the first file name
1095 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1096 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1097 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1098 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1100 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1101 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1103 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1104 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1107 ** Changes in behavior
1109 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1110 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1112 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1113 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1114 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1116 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1117 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1119 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1121 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1122 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1123 is still marked with a '+'.
1126 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1130 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1131 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1135 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1136 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1137 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1138 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1139 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1140 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1142 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1143 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1145 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1146 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1148 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1150 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1151 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1152 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1154 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1155 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1157 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1158 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1159 used to factor large numbers.
1161 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1164 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1166 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1168 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1169 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1171 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1172 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1173 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1174 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1176 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1177 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1178 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1180 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1181 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1185 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1187 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1188 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1190 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1191 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1193 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1195 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1196 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1200 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1201 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1202 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1204 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1206 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1207 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1208 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1210 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1211 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1212 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1214 ** Changes in behavior
1216 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1217 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1220 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1224 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1225 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1226 'futimens' system calls.
1230 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1232 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1233 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1234 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1236 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1237 with no USERNAME argument.
1239 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1240 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1241 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1243 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1244 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1245 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1246 number of fields for some inputs.
1248 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1249 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1251 ** Changes in behavior
1253 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1254 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1257 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1261 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1263 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1264 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1265 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1266 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1268 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1269 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1271 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1272 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1274 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1275 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1277 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1278 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1279 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1280 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1282 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1283 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1284 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1285 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1286 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1287 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1289 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1290 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1292 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1293 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1294 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1296 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1297 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1299 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1300 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1302 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1303 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1304 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1305 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1307 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1308 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1310 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1311 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1313 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1314 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1315 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1319 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1320 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1322 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1323 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1324 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1325 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1329 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1330 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1332 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1334 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1338 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1339 which have negative errno values.
1343 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1347 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1351 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1352 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1355 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1359 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1360 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1361 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1363 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1364 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1365 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1366 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1370 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1371 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1372 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1373 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1376 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1380 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1382 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1383 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1384 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1387 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1391 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1392 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1394 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1396 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1398 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1400 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1404 ** Changes in behavior
1406 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1407 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1409 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1410 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1412 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1413 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1414 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1418 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1419 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1420 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1421 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1422 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1423 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1424 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1425 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1426 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1427 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1428 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1430 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1431 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1432 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1435 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1438 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1439 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1440 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1442 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1443 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1444 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1447 ** New build options
1449 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1450 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1451 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1452 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1454 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1455 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1456 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1457 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1458 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1459 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1460 of "make check" fail.
1462 ** Remove deprecated options
1464 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1465 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1466 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1467 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1468 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1470 ** Improved robustness
1472 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1473 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1474 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1475 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1476 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1477 loss of the contents of a/f.
1479 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1480 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1484 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1485 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1486 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1488 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1489 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1490 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1491 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1493 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1494 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1495 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1496 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1497 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1498 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1499 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1500 destination is a symlink.
1502 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1504 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1505 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1507 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1508 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1510 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1512 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1513 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1515 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1516 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1518 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1521 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1522 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1524 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1525 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1527 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1528 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1529 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1530 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1532 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1533 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1534 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1536 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1537 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1538 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1540 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1541 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1542 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1543 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1545 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1546 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1547 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1549 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1550 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1552 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1553 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1555 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1557 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1558 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1559 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1561 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1562 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1564 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1565 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1567 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1568 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1570 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1571 [present in the original version]
1574 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1578 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1580 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1581 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1582 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1584 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1585 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1587 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1591 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1592 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1594 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1595 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1597 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1598 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1600 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1601 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1602 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1603 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1604 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1605 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1607 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1608 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1611 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1612 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1614 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1617 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1618 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1619 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1621 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1622 directory is unreadable.
1624 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1625 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1626 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1628 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1629 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1630 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1631 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1632 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1635 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1636 Before it would print nothing.
1638 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1640 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1641 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1642 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1643 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1644 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1645 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1646 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1647 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1649 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1653 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1654 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1655 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1657 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1658 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1659 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1660 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1663 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1667 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1668 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1669 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1670 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1671 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1672 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1673 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1675 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1676 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1677 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1678 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1679 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1680 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1681 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1682 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1684 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1685 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1686 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1689 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1693 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1694 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1696 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1697 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1698 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1700 ** Improved robustness
1702 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1703 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1704 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1707 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1711 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1712 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1713 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1714 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1715 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1717 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1721 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1724 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1728 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1729 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1730 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1731 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1733 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1734 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1736 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1737 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1738 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1741 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1743 ** Improved robustness
1745 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1746 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1748 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1749 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1750 or NFS-mounted partition.
1752 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1753 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1757 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1758 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1759 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1760 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1761 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1762 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1764 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1765 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1767 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1768 or neglect to report file removal.
1770 For the "groups" command:
1772 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1773 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1775 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1777 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1779 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1783 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1784 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1787 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1789 ** Changes in behavior
1791 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1792 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1793 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1794 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1796 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1797 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1798 a final `./' or `../' component.
1800 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1801 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1802 this only for pipes.
1804 ** Infrastructure changes
1806 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1807 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1808 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1809 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1813 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1814 name is "." or "..".
1816 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1817 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1818 dirent.d_type support.
1820 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1821 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1823 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1824 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1825 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1826 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1829 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1831 ** Changes in behavior
1833 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1837 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1838 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1842 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1843 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1844 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1846 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1847 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1849 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1850 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1852 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1854 ** Improved robustness
1856 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1857 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1858 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1860 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1861 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1864 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1865 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1867 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1868 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1870 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1871 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1873 ** Changes in behavior
1875 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1876 where the two are distinct.
1878 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1879 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1880 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1881 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1882 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1883 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1884 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1885 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1886 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1887 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1888 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1889 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1890 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1891 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1892 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1893 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1894 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1896 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1897 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1898 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1900 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1901 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1902 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1903 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1906 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1907 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1911 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1912 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1913 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1914 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1916 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1917 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1918 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1920 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1921 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1922 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1923 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1924 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1927 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1928 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1930 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1931 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1932 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1933 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1935 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1936 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1937 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1939 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1940 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1941 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1942 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1944 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1945 and sticky) with the -m option.
1947 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1948 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1949 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1950 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1951 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1953 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1954 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1956 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1960 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1961 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1962 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1963 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1965 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1967 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1969 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1970 silently ignoring one of them.
1972 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1973 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1974 containing this change was 5.92.
1976 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1977 automatically newline terminated.
1979 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1980 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1981 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1982 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1985 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1986 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1987 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1990 ** Scheduled for removal
1992 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1993 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1995 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1996 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1997 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1998 command to unlink a directory.
2000 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
2001 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
2002 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
2003 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
2007 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
2008 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
2009 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
2010 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
2011 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
2012 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
2016 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
2017 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
2019 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
2021 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
2022 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
2023 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
2025 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
2026 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
2029 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
2030 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
2032 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
2033 list directories before files.
2035 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
2036 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
2037 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
2038 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
2041 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
2043 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
2045 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
2046 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
2047 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
2049 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2050 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2054 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
2055 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
2056 usually printing nothing.
2058 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
2060 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
2061 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
2062 them with hard-linked directories.
2064 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
2065 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
2066 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
2068 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
2069 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
2070 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
2072 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
2075 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
2076 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
2078 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
2079 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
2081 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
2082 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
2084 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
2085 all command-line arguments.
2087 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2089 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2091 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2092 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2094 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2096 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2097 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2098 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2099 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2100 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2102 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2103 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2105 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2106 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2107 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2108 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2110 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2112 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2116 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2117 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2119 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2120 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2122 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
2123 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2125 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2126 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
2128 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2129 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2131 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2133 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2134 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2135 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2138 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2140 ** Build-related bug fixes
2142 installing .mo files would fail
2145 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2149 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2151 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2154 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2158 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2159 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2163 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2165 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2166 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2168 ** Deprecated options
2170 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2171 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
2173 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2177 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2179 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
2180 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2181 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2182 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2184 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2187 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2193 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2198 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2200 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2202 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2203 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
2204 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
2206 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2207 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2208 problematic usages. These include:
2210 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2211 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2212 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2213 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2214 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2215 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2216 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2217 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2218 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2220 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2221 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2223 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2224 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2225 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2226 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2228 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2229 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2230 between binary and text files.
2232 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2236 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2240 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2241 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2243 head tac tail tee tr
2244 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2246 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2247 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2249 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2250 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2251 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2253 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2255 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2257 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2258 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2259 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2263 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2265 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2266 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2268 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2269 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2270 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2274 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2275 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2279 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2280 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2281 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2285 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2286 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2290 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2292 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2294 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2298 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2299 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2300 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2302 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2303 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2304 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2305 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2306 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2308 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2312 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2313 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2314 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2316 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2318 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2319 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2320 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2321 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2323 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2325 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2326 rather than silently wrapping around.
2328 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2329 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2331 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2332 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2334 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2335 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2336 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2337 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2339 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2341 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2343 ** Improved robustness
2345 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2346 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2347 no matter how large the result.
2349 ** Improved portability
2351 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2352 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2354 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2356 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2357 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2358 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2360 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2361 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2365 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2366 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2368 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2370 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2371 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2372 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2373 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2375 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2376 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2378 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2379 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2380 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2382 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2384 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2385 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2387 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2388 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2390 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2392 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2393 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2395 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2396 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2398 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2399 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2400 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2402 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2404 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2406 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2410 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2412 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2413 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2414 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2416 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2417 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2419 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2420 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2421 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2423 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2424 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2426 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2427 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2428 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2429 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2431 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2432 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2434 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2435 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2436 the file system does not support it.
2438 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2440 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2441 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2443 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2445 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2446 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2448 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2449 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2450 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2451 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2453 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2454 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2457 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2458 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2459 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2460 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2462 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2463 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2464 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2465 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2467 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2468 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2470 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2472 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2473 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2474 reporting incorrect results.
2478 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2479 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2481 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2484 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2486 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2487 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2489 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2490 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2492 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2495 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2496 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2497 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2498 the file name does not look like a page range.
2500 printf has several changes:
2502 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2503 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2505 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2506 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2507 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2509 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2510 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2513 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2514 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2516 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2517 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2519 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2521 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2522 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2524 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2526 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2528 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2529 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2530 when first encountering the directory.
2534 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2535 output; POSIX requires this.
2537 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2538 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2540 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2542 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2543 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2545 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2546 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2548 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2549 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2550 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2551 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2552 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2553 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2554 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2556 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2557 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2558 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2560 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2561 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2563 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2565 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2567 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2568 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2569 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2570 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2572 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2576 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2577 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2578 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2579 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2580 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2582 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2583 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2584 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2586 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2587 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2589 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2590 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2592 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2593 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2594 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2595 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2596 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2598 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2599 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2601 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2602 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2604 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2606 nocreat do not create the output file
2607 excl fail if the output file already exists
2608 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2609 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2611 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2613 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2614 direct use direct I/O for data
2615 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2616 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2617 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2618 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2619 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2621 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2623 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2624 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2627 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2628 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2629 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2630 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2631 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2632 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2634 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2635 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2637 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2640 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2642 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2644 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2645 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2647 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2648 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2649 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2651 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2652 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2653 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2655 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2657 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2658 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2660 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2661 for compatibility with bash.
2663 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2665 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2666 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2667 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2668 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2670 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2671 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2673 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2674 ls supports TABSIZE.
2675 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2676 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2677 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2679 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2682 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2684 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2685 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2686 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2687 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2688 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2689 an offset, not as a file name.
2691 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2692 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2694 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2695 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2697 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2698 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2700 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2701 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2702 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2704 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2705 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2707 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2708 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2712 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2714 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2716 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2720 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2721 or more arguments between partitions.
2723 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2724 holes in the destination.
2726 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2727 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2728 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2729 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2730 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2731 terminates immediately.
2733 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2735 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2737 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2738 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2739 not the empty string.
2741 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2742 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2746 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2747 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2748 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2751 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2758 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2762 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2763 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2765 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2766 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2768 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2769 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2770 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2773 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2777 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2778 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2780 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2781 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2783 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2784 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2785 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2787 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2789 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2792 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2794 ** Configuration option
2796 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2797 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2801 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2802 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2806 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2807 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2808 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2811 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2812 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2813 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2814 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2815 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2816 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2817 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2820 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2824 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2825 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2826 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2828 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2829 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2831 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2833 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2834 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2835 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2836 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2838 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2840 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2841 not just the ones that reference directories
2843 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2844 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2846 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2847 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2848 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2850 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2851 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2852 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2853 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2854 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2855 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2857 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2862 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2863 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2865 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2867 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2869 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2871 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2872 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2874 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2875 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2877 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2879 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2883 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2885 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2887 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2888 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2889 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2890 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2891 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2893 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2894 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2896 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2897 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2899 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2900 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2902 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2903 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2904 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2908 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2909 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2910 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2911 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2912 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2913 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2914 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2915 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2916 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2917 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2918 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2919 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2920 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2921 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2923 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2925 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2926 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2928 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2930 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2932 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2933 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2935 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2937 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2938 without a trailing newline.
2940 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2941 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2943 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2946 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2950 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2952 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2954 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2955 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2956 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2957 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2959 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2961 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2962 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2963 be printed without leading spaces.
2965 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2966 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2971 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2972 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2973 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2975 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2977 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2978 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2980 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2981 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2983 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2984 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2986 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2988 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2990 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2992 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2993 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2995 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2997 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2999 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
3000 byte offsets are specified.
3003 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
3006 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
3009 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
3010 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
3011 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
3012 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
3013 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
3014 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
3015 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
3016 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
3017 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
3018 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3019 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
3020 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
3021 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
3022 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
3023 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
3024 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
3025 directory where M has write access.
3026 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
3027 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
3028 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
3031 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
3032 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
3033 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
3034 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
3035 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
3036 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
3037 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
3038 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
3039 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
3040 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
3041 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
3042 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
3043 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
3044 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
3045 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
3046 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
3047 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
3048 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
3049 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
3050 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
3051 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
3052 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
3053 appeared one additional time.
3055 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3056 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
3057 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
3058 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
3061 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
3062 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
3063 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
3064 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
3065 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
3066 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
3067 if there were more than 338.
3069 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
3070 - false --help now exits nonzero
3073 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
3074 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
3075 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
3076 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
3079 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
3080 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
3081 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
3082 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
3083 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3086 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3087 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3088 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3089 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
3090 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3091 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3092 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3095 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3096 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3097 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3098 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3099 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3100 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3102 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3103 under certain unusual conditions
3104 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3105 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3108 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3109 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3110 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3111 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3112 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3113 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
3114 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3115 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3116 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
3117 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
3118 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3119 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3120 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3121 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3122 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3123 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3126 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3127 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3130 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3131 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3132 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3133 involving hard-linked directories
3134 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3135 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
3136 character-special and block files
3139 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3140 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3141 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3142 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3143 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3144 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3145 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3146 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3147 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3149 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
3150 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
3151 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3152 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3153 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3154 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3155 specified on the command line.
3156 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3157 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
3158 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3159 the first file untouched.
3160 * readlink: new program
3161 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3162 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3163 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3164 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3165 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3166 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3169 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3170 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3171 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3172 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3173 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3174 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3175 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
3176 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
3177 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3178 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3179 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3180 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3182 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3183 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3184 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3186 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3187 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3188 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3189 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3190 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3191 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3192 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3193 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
3196 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3197 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3200 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3201 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3202 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3203 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3204 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
3205 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3206 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3209 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3210 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3212 ========================================================================
3213 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3214 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3217 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3219 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3220 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3221 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3222 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3223 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3224 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3225 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3226 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
3227 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3228 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3229 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3230 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3232 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3233 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3234 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3235 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3237 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3240 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3242 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3243 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3244 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3245 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3246 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3247 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3248 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3251 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3252 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3253 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3254 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3255 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3256 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3257 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3258 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3259 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3260 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3261 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3262 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3263 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3264 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3265 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3266 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3268 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3269 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3271 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3272 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3273 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3274 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3275 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3276 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3278 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3279 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3280 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3281 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3282 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3283 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3284 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3286 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3287 the source files in the following example:
3288 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3289 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3290 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3291 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3292 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3293 links between source files with --preserve=links
3294 * cp accepts new options:
3295 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3296 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3297 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3298 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3299 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3300 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3301 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3302 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3303 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3305 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3306 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3307 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3308 even though it's older than dest.
3309 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3310 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3311 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3312 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3313 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3315 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3316 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3317 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3318 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3319 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3320 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3321 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3323 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3324 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3325 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3327 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3328 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3329 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3330 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3331 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3332 This is the default.
3334 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3335 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3336 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3337 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3338 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3340 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3343 ========================================================================
3344 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3345 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3348 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3349 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3351 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3352 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3353 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3354 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3355 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3357 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3358 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3359 that specifies a non-directory
3362 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3363 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3364 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3365 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3366 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3367 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3368 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3369 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3370 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3371 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3372 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3373 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3374 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3375 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3376 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3377 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3378 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3379 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3380 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3381 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3382 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3383 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3384 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3385 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3387 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3388 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3389 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3391 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3393 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3394 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3396 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3397 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3398 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3399 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3400 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3402 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3403 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3404 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3405 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3406 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3408 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3410 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3411 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3412 * still more portability fixes
3413 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3414 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3416 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3418 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3420 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3422 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3423 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3424 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3425 there is any time remaining
3426 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3428 ========================================================================
3429 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3430 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3432 This package began as the union of the following:
3433 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3435 ========================================================================
3437 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3439 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3440 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3441 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3442 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3443 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3444 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.