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 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
127 ** Improved portability
129 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
131 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
132 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
133 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
135 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
136 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
140 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
141 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
143 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
144 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
146 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
147 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
149 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now closes it and then reopens it with an
150 unreadable file descriptor. (This step is skipped if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.)
151 This prevents the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
153 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
154 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
155 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
157 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
161 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
163 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
164 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
165 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
167 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
168 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
170 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
171 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
172 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
174 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
175 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
177 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
178 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
179 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
180 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
182 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
183 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
185 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
186 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
187 the file system does not support it.
189 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
191 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
192 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
194 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
196 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
197 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
199 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
200 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
201 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
202 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
204 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
205 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
208 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
209 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
210 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
211 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
213 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
214 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
215 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
216 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
218 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
219 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
221 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
223 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
224 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
225 reporting incorrect results.
229 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
230 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
232 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
233 value happens to be -1.
235 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
237 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
238 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
240 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
241 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
243 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
246 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
247 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
248 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
249 the file name does not look like a page range.
251 printf has several changes:
253 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
254 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
256 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
257 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
258 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
260 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
261 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
264 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
265 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
267 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
268 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
270 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
271 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
273 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
275 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
277 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
278 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
279 when first encountering the directory.
283 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
284 output; POSIX requires this.
286 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
287 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
289 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
291 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
292 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
294 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
295 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
297 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
298 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
299 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
300 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
301 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
302 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
303 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
305 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
306 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
307 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
309 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
310 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
312 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
314 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
316 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
317 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
318 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
319 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
321 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
325 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
326 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
327 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
328 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
329 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
331 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
332 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
333 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
335 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
336 is longer than PATH_MAX.
338 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
339 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
341 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
342 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
343 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
344 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
345 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
347 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
348 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
350 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
351 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
353 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
355 nocreat do not create the output file
356 excl fail if the output file already exists
357 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
358 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
360 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
362 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
363 direct use direct I/O for data
364 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
365 sync likewise, but also for metadata
366 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
367 nofollow do not follow symlinks
368 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
370 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
372 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
373 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
376 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
377 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
378 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
379 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
380 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
381 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
383 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
384 list of NUL-terminated file names.
386 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
389 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
391 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
393 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
394 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
396 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
397 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
398 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
400 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
401 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
402 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
404 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
406 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
407 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
409 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
410 for compatibility with bash.
412 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
414 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
415 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
416 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
417 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
419 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
420 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
422 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
424 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
425 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
426 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
428 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
431 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
433 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
434 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
435 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
436 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
437 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
438 an offset, not as a file name.
440 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
441 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
443 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
444 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
446 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
447 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
449 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
450 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
451 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
453 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
454 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
458 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
460 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
462 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
466 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
467 or more arguments between partitions.
469 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
470 holes in the destination.
472 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
473 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
474 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
475 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
476 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
477 terminates immediately.
479 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
481 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
483 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
484 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
485 not the empty string.
487 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
488 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
492 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
493 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
494 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
497 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
504 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
508 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
509 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
511 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
512 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
514 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
515 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
516 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
519 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
523 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
524 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
526 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
527 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
529 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
530 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
531 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
533 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
535 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
538 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
540 ** Configuration option
542 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
543 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
547 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
548 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
552 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
553 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
554 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
557 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
558 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
559 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
560 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
561 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
562 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
563 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
566 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
570 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
571 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
572 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
574 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
575 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
577 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
579 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
580 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
581 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
582 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
584 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
586 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
587 not just the ones that reference directories
589 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
590 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
592 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
593 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
594 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
596 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
597 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
598 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
599 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
600 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
601 ragged when a datum was too wide.
603 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
608 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
609 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
611 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
613 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
615 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
617 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
618 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
620 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
621 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
623 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
625 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
629 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
631 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
633 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
634 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
635 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
636 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
637 resolution is the best we can do right now.
639 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
640 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
642 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
643 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
645 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
646 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
648 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
649 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
650 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
654 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
655 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
656 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
657 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
658 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
659 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
660 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
661 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
662 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
663 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
664 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
665 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
666 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
667 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
669 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
671 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
672 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
674 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
676 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
678 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
679 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
681 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
683 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
684 without a trailing newline.
686 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
687 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
689 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
692 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
696 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
698 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
700 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
701 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
702 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
703 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
705 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
707 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
708 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
709 be printed without leading spaces.
711 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
712 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
717 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
718 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
719 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
721 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
723 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
724 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
726 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
727 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
729 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
730 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
732 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
734 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
736 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
738 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
739 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
741 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
743 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
745 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
746 byte offsets are specified.
749 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
752 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
755 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
756 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
757 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
758 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
759 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
760 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
761 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
762 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
763 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
764 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
765 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
766 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
767 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
768 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
769 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
770 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
771 directory where M has write access.
772 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
773 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
774 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
777 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
778 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
779 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
780 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
781 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
782 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
783 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
784 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
785 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
786 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
787 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
788 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
789 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
790 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
791 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
792 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
793 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
794 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
795 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
796 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
797 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
798 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
799 appeared one additional time.
801 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
802 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
803 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
804 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
807 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
808 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
809 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
810 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
811 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
812 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
813 if there were more than 338.
815 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
816 - false --help now exits nonzero
819 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
820 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
821 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
822 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
825 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
826 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
827 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
828 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
829 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
832 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
833 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
834 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
835 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
836 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
837 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
838 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
841 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
842 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
843 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
844 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
845 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
846 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
848 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
849 under certain unusual conditions
850 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
851 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
854 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
855 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
856 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
857 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
858 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
859 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
860 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
861 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
862 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
863 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
864 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
865 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
866 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
867 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
868 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
869 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
872 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
873 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
876 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
877 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
878 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
879 involving hard-linked directories
880 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
881 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
882 character-special and block files
885 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
886 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
887 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
888 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
889 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
890 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
891 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
892 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
893 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
895 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
896 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
897 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
898 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
899 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
900 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
901 specified on the command line.
902 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
903 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
904 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
905 the first file untouched.
906 * readlink: new program
907 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
908 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
909 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
910 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
911 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
912 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
915 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
916 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
917 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
918 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
919 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
920 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
921 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
922 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
923 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
924 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
925 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
926 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
928 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
929 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
930 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
932 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
933 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
934 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
935 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
936 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
937 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
938 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
939 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
942 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
943 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
946 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
947 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
948 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
949 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
950 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
951 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
952 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
955 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
956 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
958 ========================================================================
959 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
960 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
963 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
965 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
966 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
967 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
968 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
969 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
970 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
971 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
972 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
973 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
974 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
975 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
976 The old options will continue to work for a while.
978 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
979 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
980 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
981 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
983 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
986 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
988 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
989 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
990 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
991 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
992 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
993 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
994 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
997 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
998 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
999 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1000 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1001 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1002 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1003 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1004 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1005 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1006 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1007 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1008 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1009 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1010 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1011 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1012 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1014 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1015 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1017 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1018 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1019 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1020 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1021 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1022 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1024 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1025 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1026 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1027 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1028 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1029 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1030 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1032 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1033 the source files in the following example:
1034 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1035 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1036 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1037 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1038 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1039 links between source files with --preserve=links
1040 * cp accepts new options:
1041 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1042 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1043 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1044 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1045 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1046 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1047 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1048 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1049 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1051 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1052 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1053 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1054 even though it's older than dest.
1055 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1056 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1057 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1058 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1059 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1061 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1062 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1063 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1064 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1065 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1066 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1067 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1069 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1070 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1071 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1073 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1074 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1075 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1076 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1077 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1078 This is the default.
1080 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1081 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1082 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1083 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1084 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1086 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1089 ========================================================================
1090 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1091 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1094 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1095 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1097 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1098 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1099 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1100 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1101 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1103 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1104 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1105 that specifies a non-directory
1108 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1109 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1110 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1111 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1112 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1113 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1114 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1115 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1116 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1117 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1118 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1119 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1120 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1121 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1122 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1123 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1124 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1125 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1126 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1127 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1128 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1129 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1130 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1131 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1133 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1134 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1135 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1137 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1139 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1140 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1142 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1143 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1144 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1145 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1146 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1148 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1149 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1150 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1151 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1152 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1154 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1156 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1157 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1158 * still more portability fixes
1159 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1160 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1162 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1164 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1166 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1168 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1169 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1170 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1171 there is any time remaining
1172 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1174 ========================================================================
1175 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1176 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1178 This package began as the union of the following:
1179 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.