1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.1 (2005-??-??) [unstable]
5 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
6 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
7 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
8 conforming to older POSIX versions.
10 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
13 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
19 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
24 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
26 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
28 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
29 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
30 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
32 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
33 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
34 problematic usages. These include:
36 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
37 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
38 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
39 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
40 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
41 tail - main.c tail main.c tail -- - main.c
42 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
43 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
44 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
46 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
47 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
48 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
49 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
51 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
53 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
55 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
56 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
57 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
61 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
63 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
64 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
66 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
67 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
68 blocks until F contains N blocks.
72 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
73 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
77 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
78 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
79 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
83 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
85 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
87 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
91 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
92 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
93 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
95 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
96 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
97 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
98 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
99 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
101 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
105 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
106 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
107 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
109 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
110 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
111 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
112 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
114 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
116 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
117 rather than silently wrapping around.
119 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
120 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
122 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
123 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
125 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
126 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
127 to return to its initial working directory.
129 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
131 ** Improved portability
133 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
135 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
136 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
137 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
139 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
140 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
144 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
145 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
147 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
148 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
150 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
151 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
153 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
154 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
156 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now closes it and then reopens it with an
157 unreadable file descriptor. (This step is skipped if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.)
158 This prevents the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
160 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
161 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
162 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
164 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
168 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
170 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
171 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
172 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
174 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
175 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
177 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
178 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
179 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
181 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
182 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
184 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
185 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
186 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
187 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
189 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
190 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
192 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
193 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
194 the file system does not support it.
196 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
198 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
199 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
201 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
203 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
204 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
206 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
207 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
208 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
209 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
211 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
212 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
215 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
216 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
217 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
218 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
220 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
221 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
222 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
223 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
225 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
226 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
228 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
230 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
231 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
232 reporting incorrect results.
236 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
237 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
239 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
240 value happens to be -1.
242 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
244 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
245 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
247 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
248 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
250 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
253 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
254 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
255 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
256 the file name does not look like a page range.
258 printf has several changes:
260 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
261 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
263 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
264 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
265 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
267 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
268 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
271 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
272 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
274 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
275 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
277 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
278 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
280 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
282 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
284 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
285 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
286 when first encountering the directory.
290 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
291 output; POSIX requires this.
293 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
294 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
296 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
298 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
299 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
301 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
302 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
304 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
305 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
306 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
307 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
308 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
309 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
310 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
312 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
313 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
314 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
316 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
317 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
319 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
321 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
323 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
324 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
325 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
326 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
328 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
332 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
333 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
334 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
335 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
336 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
338 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
339 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
340 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
342 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
343 is longer than PATH_MAX.
345 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
346 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
348 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
349 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
350 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
351 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
352 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
354 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
355 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
357 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
358 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
360 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
362 nocreat do not create the output file
363 excl fail if the output file already exists
364 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
365 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
367 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
369 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
370 direct use direct I/O for data
371 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
372 sync likewise, but also for metadata
373 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
374 nofollow do not follow symlinks
375 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
377 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
379 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
380 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
383 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
384 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
385 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
386 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
387 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
388 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
390 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
391 list of NUL-terminated file names.
393 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
396 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
398 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
400 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
401 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
403 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
404 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
405 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
407 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
408 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
409 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
411 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
413 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
414 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
416 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
417 for compatibility with bash.
419 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
421 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
422 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
423 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
424 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
426 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
427 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
429 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
431 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
432 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
433 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
435 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
438 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
440 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
441 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
442 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
443 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
444 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
445 an offset, not as a file name.
447 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
448 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
450 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
451 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
453 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
454 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
456 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
457 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
458 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
460 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
461 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
465 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
467 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
469 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
473 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
474 or more arguments between partitions.
476 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
477 holes in the destination.
479 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
480 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
481 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
482 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
483 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
484 terminates immediately.
486 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
488 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
490 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
491 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
492 not the empty string.
494 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
495 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
499 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
500 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
501 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
504 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
511 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
515 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
516 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
518 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
519 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
521 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
522 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
523 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
526 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
530 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
531 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
533 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
534 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
536 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
537 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
538 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
540 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
542 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
545 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
547 ** Configuration option
549 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
550 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
554 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
555 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
559 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
560 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
561 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
564 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
565 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
566 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
567 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
568 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
569 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
570 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
573 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
577 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
578 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
579 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
581 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
582 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
584 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
586 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
587 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
588 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
589 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
591 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
593 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
594 not just the ones that reference directories
596 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
597 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
599 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
600 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
601 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
603 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
604 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
605 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
606 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
607 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
608 ragged when a datum was too wide.
610 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
615 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
616 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
618 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
620 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
622 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
624 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
625 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
627 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
628 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
630 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
632 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
636 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
638 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
640 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
641 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
642 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
643 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
644 resolution is the best we can do right now.
646 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
647 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
649 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
650 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
652 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
653 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
655 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
656 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
657 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
661 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
662 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
663 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
664 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
665 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
666 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
667 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
668 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
669 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
670 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
671 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
672 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
673 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
674 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
676 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
678 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
679 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
681 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
683 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
685 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
686 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
688 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
690 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
691 without a trailing newline.
693 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
694 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
696 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
699 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
703 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
705 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
707 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
708 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
709 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
710 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
712 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
714 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
715 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
716 be printed without leading spaces.
718 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
719 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
724 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
725 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
726 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
728 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
730 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
731 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
733 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
734 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
736 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
737 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
739 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
741 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
743 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
745 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
746 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
748 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
750 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
752 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
753 byte offsets are specified.
756 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
759 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
762 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
763 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
764 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
765 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
766 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
767 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
768 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
769 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
770 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
771 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
772 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
773 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
774 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
775 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
776 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
777 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
778 directory where M has write access.
779 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
780 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
781 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
784 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
785 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
786 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
787 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
788 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
789 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
790 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
791 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
792 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
793 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
794 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
795 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
796 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
797 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
798 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
799 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
800 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
801 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
802 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
803 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
804 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
805 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
806 appeared one additional time.
808 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
809 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
810 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
811 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
814 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
815 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
816 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
817 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
818 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
819 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
820 if there were more than 338.
822 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
823 - false --help now exits nonzero
826 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
827 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
828 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
829 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
832 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
833 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
834 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
835 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
836 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
839 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
840 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
841 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
842 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
843 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
844 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
845 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
848 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
849 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
850 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
851 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
852 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
853 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
855 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
856 under certain unusual conditions
857 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
858 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
861 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
862 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
863 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
864 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
865 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
866 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
867 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
868 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
869 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
870 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
871 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
872 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
873 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
874 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
875 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
876 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
879 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
880 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
883 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
884 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
885 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
886 involving hard-linked directories
887 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
888 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
889 character-special and block files
892 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
893 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
894 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
895 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
896 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
897 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
898 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
899 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
900 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
902 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
903 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
904 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
905 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
906 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
907 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
908 specified on the command line.
909 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
910 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
911 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
912 the first file untouched.
913 * readlink: new program
914 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
915 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
916 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
917 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
918 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
919 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
922 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
923 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
924 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
925 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
926 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
927 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
928 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
929 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
930 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
931 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
932 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
933 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
935 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
936 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
937 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
939 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
940 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
941 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
942 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
943 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
944 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
945 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
946 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
949 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
950 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
953 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
954 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
955 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
956 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
957 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
958 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
959 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
962 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
963 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
965 ========================================================================
966 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
967 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
970 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
972 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
973 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
974 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
975 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
976 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
977 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
978 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
979 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
980 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
981 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
982 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
983 The old options will continue to work for a while.
985 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
986 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
987 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
988 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
990 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
993 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
995 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
996 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
997 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
998 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
999 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1000 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1001 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1004 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1005 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1006 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1007 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1008 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1009 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1010 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1011 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1012 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1013 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1014 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1015 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1016 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1017 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1018 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1019 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1021 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1022 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1024 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1025 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1026 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1027 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1028 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1029 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1031 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1032 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1033 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1034 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1035 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1036 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1037 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1039 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1040 the source files in the following example:
1041 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1042 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1043 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1044 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1045 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1046 links between source files with --preserve=links
1047 * cp accepts new options:
1048 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1049 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1050 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1051 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1052 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1053 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1054 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1055 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1056 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1058 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1059 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1060 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1061 even though it's older than dest.
1062 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1063 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1064 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1065 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1066 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1068 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1069 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1070 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1071 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1072 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1073 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1074 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1076 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1077 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1078 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1080 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1081 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1082 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1083 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1084 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1085 This is the default.
1087 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1088 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1089 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1090 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1091 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1093 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1096 ========================================================================
1097 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1098 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1101 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1102 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1104 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1105 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1106 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1107 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1108 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1110 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1111 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1112 that specifies a non-directory
1115 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1116 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1117 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1118 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1119 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1120 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1121 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1122 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1123 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1124 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1125 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1126 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1127 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1128 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1129 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1130 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1131 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1132 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1133 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1134 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1135 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1136 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1137 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1138 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1140 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1141 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1142 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1144 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1146 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1147 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1149 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1150 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1151 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1152 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1153 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1155 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1156 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1157 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1158 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1159 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1161 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1163 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1164 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1165 * still more portability fixes
1166 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1167 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1169 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1171 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1173 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1175 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1176 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1177 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1178 there is any time remaining
1179 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1181 ========================================================================
1182 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1183 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1185 This package began as the union of the following:
1186 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.