1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
8 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
9 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
11 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
12 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
14 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
15 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
17 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
18 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
22 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
23 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
24 processed portion thereof.
27 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
31 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
32 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
33 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
34 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
35 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
37 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
38 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
40 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
41 reject file names invalid for that file system.
43 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
44 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
48 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
49 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
50 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
51 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
52 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
53 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
54 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
55 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
57 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
58 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
59 the same number of fields are output for each line.
61 ** Changes in behavior
63 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
64 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
65 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
68 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
72 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
73 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
74 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
77 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
81 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
82 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
84 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
85 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
87 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
88 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
90 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
91 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
92 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
93 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
95 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
96 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
98 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
99 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
100 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
102 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
104 ** Changes in behavior
106 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
107 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
108 to the number of available processors.
112 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
115 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
119 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
120 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
121 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
122 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
124 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
125 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
126 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
128 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
129 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
131 ** Changes in behavior
133 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
134 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
136 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
137 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
138 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
139 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
140 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
141 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
143 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
144 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
145 the same way as the others.
148 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
152 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
153 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
154 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
156 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
157 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
159 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
160 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
161 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
163 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
164 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
166 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
167 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
169 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
170 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
171 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
173 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
174 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
175 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
176 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
180 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
181 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
183 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
186 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
187 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
189 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
191 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
192 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
193 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
195 ** Changes in behavior
197 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
198 rather than its aliased target.
200 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
201 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
202 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
204 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
205 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
206 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
207 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
208 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
209 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
210 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
211 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
213 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
215 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
217 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
218 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
221 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
222 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
223 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
224 control like taskset for example.
226 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
228 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
229 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
230 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
231 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
232 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
233 includes %C when context information is available.
235 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
236 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
237 rather than a file system attribute.
239 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
240 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
241 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
242 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
244 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
245 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
246 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
248 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
249 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
250 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
253 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
257 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
258 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
260 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
262 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
263 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
265 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
266 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
267 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
268 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
270 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
271 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
272 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
276 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
277 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
279 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
280 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
281 duration after the initial signal was sent.
283 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
284 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
285 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
286 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
287 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
288 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
289 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
290 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
291 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
293 ** Changes in behavior
295 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
296 sequence when it would be a no-op.
298 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
299 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
302 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
306 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
307 of available processors, which may not have been the case
308 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
309 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
313 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
314 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
316 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
317 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
318 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
319 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
321 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
322 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
323 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
326 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
330 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
331 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
332 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
334 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
335 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
336 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
338 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
339 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
341 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
342 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
343 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
344 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
346 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
347 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
348 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
350 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
351 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
352 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
353 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
355 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
356 renamed-aside and then recreated.
357 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
359 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
360 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
361 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
362 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
364 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
365 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
366 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
368 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
369 processes will not intersperse their output.
370 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
373 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
377 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
378 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
380 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
381 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
383 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
384 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
385 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
386 the presence of the empty string argument.
387 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
389 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
390 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
391 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
392 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
394 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
395 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
397 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
398 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
399 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
401 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
402 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
403 and with a malicious user on the same system
404 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
405 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
408 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
412 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
413 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
414 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
416 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
417 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
418 offending directory and all "contents."
420 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
421 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
422 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
424 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
425 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
426 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
428 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
429 processes will not intersperse their output.
430 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
431 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
433 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
434 output the name of the file to stdout.
435 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
437 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
438 call fails with errno == EACCES.
439 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
441 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
442 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
445 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
446 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
447 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
449 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
450 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
451 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
452 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
453 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
454 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
456 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
457 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
458 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
459 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
461 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
462 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
464 ** Changes in behavior
466 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
467 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
468 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
469 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
470 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
472 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
473 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
474 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
475 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
477 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
479 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
480 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
481 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
482 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
483 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
487 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
491 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
492 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
494 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
495 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
497 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
498 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
499 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
501 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
502 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
505 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
509 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
510 when the source file doesn't have write access.
511 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
513 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
514 to accommodate leap seconds.
515 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
517 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
518 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
519 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
521 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
523 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
524 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
525 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
527 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
528 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
529 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
530 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
531 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
535 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
536 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
537 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
538 directory or a symlink to a directory.
540 ** Changes in behavior
542 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
543 environment variable is set.
545 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
546 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
547 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
551 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
552 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
553 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
554 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
556 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
557 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
558 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
559 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
563 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
564 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
565 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
567 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
568 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
569 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
570 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
571 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
572 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
575 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
576 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
579 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
583 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
584 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
585 and libraries tested at configure time.
586 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
588 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
589 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
591 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
592 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
594 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
595 printing a summary to stderr.
596 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
598 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
599 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
600 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
602 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
603 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
605 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
606 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
607 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
608 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
610 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
611 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
612 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
613 which is relatively unusual.
614 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
616 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
617 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
618 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
619 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
620 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
621 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
622 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
626 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
627 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
628 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
629 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
630 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
634 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
635 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
637 ** Changes in behavior
639 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
640 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
641 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
642 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
643 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
646 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
650 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
651 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
653 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
654 before data copying has started.
656 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
657 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
659 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
660 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
661 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
662 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
664 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
665 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
666 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
667 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
669 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
674 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
675 for its standard streams.
677 ** Changes in behavior
679 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
680 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
681 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
682 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
683 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
684 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
686 ** Deprecated options
688 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
689 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
693 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
695 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
696 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
699 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
701 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
702 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
704 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
705 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
708 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
712 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
713 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
714 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
715 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
717 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
718 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
719 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
720 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
721 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
726 make check: two tests have been corrected
730 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
731 inherited from gnulib.
734 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
738 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
739 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
740 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
741 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
743 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
744 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
746 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
748 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
749 systems without xattr support.
751 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
752 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
753 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
755 ** Changes in behavior
757 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
758 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
759 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
760 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
762 ** Improved robustness
764 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
765 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
766 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
767 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
768 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
769 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
770 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
771 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
772 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
776 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
777 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
779 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
780 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
781 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
782 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
783 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
786 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
790 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
791 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
792 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
796 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
797 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
798 data was read, or on process exit.
799 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
801 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
802 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
803 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
804 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
806 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
807 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
808 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
809 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
811 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
812 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
814 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
815 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
817 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
818 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
819 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
821 ** Changes in behavior
823 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
824 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
825 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
827 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
828 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
830 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
831 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
832 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
835 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
839 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
841 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
842 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
843 install: Never copies xattrs
845 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
846 from overwriting any existing destination file
848 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
849 mode where this feature is available.
851 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
852 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
853 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
854 do not modify the destination at all.
856 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
858 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
862 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
863 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
865 cp uses much less memory in some situations
867 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
868 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
870 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
871 processing the first file name
873 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
874 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
875 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
876 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
878 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
879 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
881 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
882 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
885 ** Changes in behavior
887 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
888 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
890 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
891 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
892 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
894 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
895 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
897 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
899 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
900 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
901 is still marked with a '+'.
904 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
908 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
909 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
913 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
914 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
915 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
916 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
917 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
918 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
920 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
921 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
923 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
924 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
926 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
928 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
929 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
930 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
932 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
933 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
935 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
936 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
937 used to factor large numbers.
939 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
942 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
944 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
946 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
947 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
949 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
950 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
951 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
952 maximum command-line (argv) length.
954 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
955 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
956 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
958 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
959 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
963 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
965 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
966 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
968 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
969 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
971 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
973 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
974 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
978 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
979 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
980 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
982 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
984 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
985 no matter how many files are in a given directory
987 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
988 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
989 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
991 ** Changes in behavior
993 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
994 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
997 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1001 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1003 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1004 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1005 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1007 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1008 with no USERNAME argument.
1010 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1011 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1012 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1014 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1015 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1016 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1017 number of fields for some inputs.
1019 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1020 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1022 ** Changes in behavior
1024 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1025 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1028 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1032 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1034 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1035 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1036 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1037 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1039 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1040 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1042 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1043 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1045 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1046 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1048 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1049 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1050 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1051 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1053 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1054 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1055 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1056 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1057 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1058 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1060 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1061 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1063 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1064 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1065 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1067 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1068 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1070 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1071 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1073 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1074 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1075 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1076 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1078 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1079 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1081 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1082 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1084 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1085 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1086 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1090 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1091 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1093 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1094 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1095 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1096 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1100 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1101 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1103 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1105 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1109 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1110 which have negative errno values.
1114 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1118 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1122 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1123 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1126 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1130 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1131 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1132 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1134 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1135 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1136 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1137 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1141 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1142 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1143 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1144 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1147 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1151 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1153 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1154 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1155 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1158 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1162 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1163 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1165 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1167 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1169 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1171 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1175 ** Changes in behavior
1177 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1178 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1180 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1181 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1183 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1184 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1185 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1189 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1190 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1191 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1192 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1193 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1194 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1195 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1196 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1197 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1198 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1199 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1201 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1202 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1203 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1206 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1209 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1210 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1211 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1213 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1214 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1215 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1218 ** New build options
1220 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1221 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1222 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1223 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1225 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1226 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1227 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1228 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1229 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1230 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1231 of "make check" fail.
1233 ** Remove deprecated options
1235 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1236 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1237 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1238 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1239 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1241 ** Improved robustness
1243 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1244 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1245 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1246 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1247 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1248 loss of the contents of a/f.
1250 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1251 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1255 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1256 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1257 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1259 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1260 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1261 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1262 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1264 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1265 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1266 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1267 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1268 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1269 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1270 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1271 destination is a symlink.
1273 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1275 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1276 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1278 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1279 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1281 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1283 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1284 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1286 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1287 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1289 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1292 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1293 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1295 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1296 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1298 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1299 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1300 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1301 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1303 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1304 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1305 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1307 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1308 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1309 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1311 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1312 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1313 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1314 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1316 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1317 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1318 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1320 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1321 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1323 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1324 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1326 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1328 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1329 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1330 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1332 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1333 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1335 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1336 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1338 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1339 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1341 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1342 [present in the original version]
1345 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1349 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1351 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1352 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1353 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1355 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1356 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1358 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1362 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1363 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1365 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1366 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1368 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1369 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1371 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1372 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1373 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1374 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1375 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1376 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1378 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1379 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1382 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1383 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1385 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1388 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1389 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1390 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1392 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1393 directory is unreadable.
1395 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1396 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1397 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1399 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1400 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1401 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1402 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1403 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1406 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1407 Before it would print nothing.
1409 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1411 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1412 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1413 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1414 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1415 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1416 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1417 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1418 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1420 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1424 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1425 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1426 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1428 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1429 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1430 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1431 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1434 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1438 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1439 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1440 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1441 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1442 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1443 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1444 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1446 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1447 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1448 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1449 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1450 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1451 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1452 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1453 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1455 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1456 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1457 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1460 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1464 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1465 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1467 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1468 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1469 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1471 ** Improved robustness
1473 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1474 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1475 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1478 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1482 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1483 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1484 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1485 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1486 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1488 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1492 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1495 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1499 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1500 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1501 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1502 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1504 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1505 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1507 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1508 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1509 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1512 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1514 ** Improved robustness
1516 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1517 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1519 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1520 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1521 or NFS-mounted partition.
1523 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1524 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1528 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1529 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1530 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1531 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1532 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1533 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1535 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1536 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1538 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1539 or neglect to report file removal.
1541 For the "groups" command:
1543 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1544 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1546 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1548 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1550 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1554 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1555 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1558 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1560 ** Changes in behavior
1562 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1563 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1564 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1565 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1567 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1568 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1569 a final `./' or `../' component.
1571 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1572 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1573 this only for pipes.
1575 ** Infrastructure changes
1577 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1578 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1579 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1580 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1584 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1585 name is "." or "..".
1587 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1588 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1589 dirent.d_type support.
1591 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1592 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1594 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1595 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1596 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1597 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1600 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1602 ** Changes in behavior
1604 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1608 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1609 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1613 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1614 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1615 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1617 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1618 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1620 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1621 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1623 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1625 ** Improved robustness
1627 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1628 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1629 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1631 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1632 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1635 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1636 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1638 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1639 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1641 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1642 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1644 ** Changes in behavior
1646 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1647 where the two are distinct.
1649 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1650 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1651 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1652 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1653 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1654 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1655 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1656 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1657 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1658 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1659 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1660 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1661 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1662 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1663 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1664 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1665 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1667 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1668 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1669 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1671 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1672 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1673 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1674 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1677 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1678 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1682 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1683 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1684 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1685 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1687 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1688 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1689 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1691 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1692 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1693 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1694 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1695 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1698 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1699 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1701 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1702 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1703 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1704 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1706 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1707 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1708 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1710 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1711 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1712 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1713 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1715 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1716 and sticky) with the -m option.
1718 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1719 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1720 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1721 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1722 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1724 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1725 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1727 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1731 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1732 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1733 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1734 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1736 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1738 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1740 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1741 silently ignoring one of them.
1743 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1744 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1745 containing this change was 5.92.
1747 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1748 automatically newline terminated.
1750 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1751 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1752 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1753 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1756 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1757 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1758 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1761 ** Scheduled for removal
1763 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1764 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1766 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1767 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1768 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1769 command to unlink a directory.
1771 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1772 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1773 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1774 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1778 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1779 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1780 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1781 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1782 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1783 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1787 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1788 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1790 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1792 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1793 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1794 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1796 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1797 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1800 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1801 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1803 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1804 list directories before files.
1806 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1807 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1808 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1809 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1812 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1814 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1816 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1817 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1818 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1820 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1821 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1825 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1826 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1827 usually printing nothing.
1829 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1831 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1832 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1833 them with hard-linked directories.
1835 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1836 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1837 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1839 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1840 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1841 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1843 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1846 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1847 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1849 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1850 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1852 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1853 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1855 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1856 all command-line arguments.
1858 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1860 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1862 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1863 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1865 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1867 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1868 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1869 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1870 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1871 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1873 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1874 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1876 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1877 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1878 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1879 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1881 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1883 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1887 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1888 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1890 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1891 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1893 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1894 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1896 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1897 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1899 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1900 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1902 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1904 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1905 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1906 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1909 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1911 ** Build-related bug fixes
1913 installing .mo files would fail
1916 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1920 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1922 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1925 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1929 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1930 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1934 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1936 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1937 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1939 ** Deprecated options
1941 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1942 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1944 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1948 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1950 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1951 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1952 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1953 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1955 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1958 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1964 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1969 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1971 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1973 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1974 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1975 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1977 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1978 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1979 problematic usages. These include:
1981 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1982 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1983 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1984 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1985 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1986 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1987 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1988 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1989 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1991 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1992 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1994 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1995 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1996 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1997 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1999 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2000 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2001 between binary and text files.
2003 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2007 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2011 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2012 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2014 head tac tail tee tr
2015 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2017 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2018 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2020 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2021 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2022 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2024 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2026 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2028 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2029 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2030 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2034 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2036 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2037 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2039 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2040 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2041 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2045 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2046 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2050 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2051 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2052 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2056 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2057 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2061 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2063 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2065 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2069 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2070 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2071 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2073 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2074 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2075 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2076 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2077 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2079 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2083 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2084 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2085 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2087 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2089 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2090 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2091 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2092 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2094 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2096 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2097 rather than silently wrapping around.
2099 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2100 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2102 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2103 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2105 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2106 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2107 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2108 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2110 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2112 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2114 ** Improved robustness
2116 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2117 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2118 no matter how large the result.
2120 ** Improved portability
2122 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2123 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2125 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2127 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2128 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2129 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2131 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2132 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2136 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2137 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2139 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2141 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2142 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2143 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2144 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2146 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2147 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2149 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2150 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2151 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2153 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2155 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2156 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2158 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2159 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2161 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2163 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2164 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2166 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2167 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2169 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2170 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2171 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2173 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2175 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2177 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2181 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2183 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2184 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2185 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2187 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2188 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2190 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2191 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2192 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2194 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2195 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2197 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2198 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2199 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2200 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2202 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2203 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2205 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2206 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2207 the file system does not support it.
2209 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2211 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2212 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2214 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2216 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2217 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2219 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2220 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2221 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2222 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2224 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2225 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2228 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2229 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2230 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2231 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2233 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2234 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2235 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2236 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2238 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2239 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2241 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2243 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2244 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2245 reporting incorrect results.
2249 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2250 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2252 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2255 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2257 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2258 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2260 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2261 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2263 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2266 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2267 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2268 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2269 the file name does not look like a page range.
2271 printf has several changes:
2273 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2274 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2276 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2277 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2278 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2280 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2281 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2284 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2285 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2287 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2288 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2290 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2292 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2293 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2295 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2297 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2299 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2300 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2301 when first encountering the directory.
2305 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2306 output; POSIX requires this.
2308 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2309 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2311 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2313 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2314 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2316 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2317 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2319 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2320 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2321 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2322 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2323 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2324 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2325 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2327 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2328 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2329 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2331 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2332 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2334 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2336 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2338 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2339 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2340 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2341 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2343 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2347 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2348 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2349 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2350 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2351 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2353 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2354 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2355 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2357 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2358 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2360 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2361 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2363 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2364 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2365 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2366 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2367 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2369 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2370 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2372 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2373 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2375 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2377 nocreat do not create the output file
2378 excl fail if the output file already exists
2379 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2380 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2382 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2384 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2385 direct use direct I/O for data
2386 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2387 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2388 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2389 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2390 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2392 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2394 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2395 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2398 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2399 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2400 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2401 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2402 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2403 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2405 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2406 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2408 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2411 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2413 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2415 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2416 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2418 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2419 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2420 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2422 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2423 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2424 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2426 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2428 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2429 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2431 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2432 for compatibility with bash.
2434 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2436 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2437 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2438 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2439 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2441 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2442 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2444 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2445 ls supports TABSIZE.
2446 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2447 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2448 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2450 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2453 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2455 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2456 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2457 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2458 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2459 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2460 an offset, not as a file name.
2462 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2463 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2465 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2466 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2468 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2469 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2471 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2472 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2473 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2475 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2476 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2478 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2479 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2483 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2485 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2487 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2491 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2492 or more arguments between partitions.
2494 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2495 holes in the destination.
2497 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2498 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2499 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2500 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2501 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2502 terminates immediately.
2504 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2506 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2508 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2509 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2510 not the empty string.
2512 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2513 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2517 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2518 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2519 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2522 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2529 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2533 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2534 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2536 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2537 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2539 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2540 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2541 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2544 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2548 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2549 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2551 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2552 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2554 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2555 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2556 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2558 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2560 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2563 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2565 ** Configuration option
2567 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2568 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2572 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2573 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2577 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2578 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2579 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2582 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2583 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2584 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2585 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2586 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2587 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2588 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2591 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2595 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2596 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2597 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2599 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2600 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2602 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2604 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2605 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2606 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2607 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2609 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2611 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2612 not just the ones that reference directories
2614 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2615 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2617 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2618 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2619 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2621 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2622 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2623 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2624 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2625 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2626 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2628 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2633 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2634 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2636 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2638 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2640 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2642 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2643 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2645 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2646 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2648 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2650 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2654 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2656 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2658 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2659 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2660 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2661 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2662 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2664 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2665 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2667 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2668 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2670 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2671 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2673 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2674 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2675 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2679 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2680 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2681 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2682 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2683 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2684 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2685 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2686 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2687 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2688 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2689 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2690 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2691 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2692 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2694 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2696 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2697 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2699 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2701 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2703 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2704 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2706 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2708 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2709 without a trailing newline.
2711 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2712 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2714 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2717 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2721 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2723 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2725 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2726 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2727 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2728 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2730 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2732 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2733 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2734 be printed without leading spaces.
2736 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2737 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2742 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2743 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2744 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2746 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2748 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2749 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2751 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2752 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2754 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2755 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2757 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2759 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2761 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2763 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2764 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2766 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2768 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2770 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2771 byte offsets are specified.
2774 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2777 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2780 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2781 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2782 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2783 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2784 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2785 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2786 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2787 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2788 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2789 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2790 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2791 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2792 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2793 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2794 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2795 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2796 directory where M has write access.
2797 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2798 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2799 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2802 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2803 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2804 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2805 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2806 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2807 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2808 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2809 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2810 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2811 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2812 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2813 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2814 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2815 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2816 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2817 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2818 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2819 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2820 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2821 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2822 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2823 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2824 appeared one additional time.
2826 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2827 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2828 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2829 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2832 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2833 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2834 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2835 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2836 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2837 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2838 if there were more than 338.
2840 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2841 - false --help now exits nonzero
2844 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2845 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2846 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2847 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2850 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2851 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2852 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2853 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2854 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2857 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2858 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2859 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2860 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2861 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2862 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2863 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2866 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2867 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2868 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2869 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2870 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2871 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2873 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2874 under certain unusual conditions
2875 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2876 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2879 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2880 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2881 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2882 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2883 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2884 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2885 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2886 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2887 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2888 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2889 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2890 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2891 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2892 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2893 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2894 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2897 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2898 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2901 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2902 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2903 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2904 involving hard-linked directories
2905 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2906 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2907 character-special and block files
2910 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2911 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2912 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2913 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2914 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2915 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2916 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2917 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2918 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2920 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2921 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2922 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2923 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2924 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2925 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2926 specified on the command line.
2927 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2928 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2929 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2930 the first file untouched.
2931 * readlink: new program
2932 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2933 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2934 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2935 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2936 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2937 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2940 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2941 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2942 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2943 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2944 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2945 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2946 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2947 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2948 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2949 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2950 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2951 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2953 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2954 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2955 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2957 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2958 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2959 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2960 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2961 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2962 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2963 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2964 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2967 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2968 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2971 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2972 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2973 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2974 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2975 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2976 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2977 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2980 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2981 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2983 ========================================================================
2984 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2985 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2988 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2990 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2991 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2992 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2993 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2994 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2995 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2996 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2997 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2998 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2999 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3000 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3001 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3003 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3004 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3005 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3006 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3008 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3011 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3013 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3014 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3015 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3016 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3017 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3018 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3019 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3022 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3023 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3024 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3025 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3026 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3027 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3028 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3029 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3030 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3031 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3032 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3033 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3034 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3035 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3036 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3037 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3039 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3040 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3042 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3043 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3044 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3045 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3046 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3047 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3049 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3050 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3051 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3052 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3053 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3054 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3055 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3057 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3058 the source files in the following example:
3059 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3060 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3061 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3062 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3063 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3064 links between source files with --preserve=links
3065 * cp accepts new options:
3066 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3067 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3068 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3069 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3070 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3071 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3072 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3073 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3074 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3076 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3077 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3078 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3079 even though it's older than dest.
3080 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3081 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3082 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3083 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3084 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3086 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3087 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3088 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3089 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3090 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3091 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3092 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3094 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3095 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3096 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3098 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3099 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3100 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3101 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3102 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3103 This is the default.
3105 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3106 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3107 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3108 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3109 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3111 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3114 ========================================================================
3115 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3116 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3119 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3120 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3122 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3123 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3124 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3125 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3126 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3128 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3129 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3130 that specifies a non-directory
3133 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3134 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3135 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3136 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3137 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3138 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3139 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3140 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3141 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3142 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3143 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3144 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3145 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3146 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3147 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3148 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3149 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3150 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3151 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3152 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3153 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3154 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3155 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3156 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3158 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3159 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3160 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3162 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3164 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3165 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3167 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3168 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3169 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3170 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3171 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3173 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3174 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3175 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3176 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3177 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3179 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3181 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3182 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3183 * still more portability fixes
3184 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3185 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3187 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3189 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3191 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3193 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3194 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3195 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3196 there is any time remaining
3197 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3199 ========================================================================
3200 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3201 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3203 This package began as the union of the following:
3204 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3206 ========================================================================
3208 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3210 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3211 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3212 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3213 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3214 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3215 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.