1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
8 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
9 and libraries tested at configure time.
10 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
12 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
13 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
15 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
16 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
18 dd now returns non-zero status if it encountered a write error while
19 printing a summary to stderr.
20 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
22 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
23 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
24 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
25 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
29 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
30 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
32 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
36 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
37 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
39 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
40 before data copying has started.
42 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
43 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
45 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
46 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
47 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
48 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
50 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
51 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
52 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
53 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
55 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
60 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
61 for its standard streams.
63 ** Changes in behavior
65 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
66 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
67 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
68 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
69 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
70 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
74 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
75 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
79 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
81 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
82 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
85 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
87 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
88 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
90 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
91 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
94 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
98 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
99 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
100 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
101 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
103 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
104 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
105 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
106 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
107 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
112 make check: two tests have been corrected
116 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
117 inherited from gnulib.
120 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
124 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
125 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
126 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
127 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
129 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
130 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
132 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
134 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
135 systems without xattr support.
137 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
138 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
139 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
141 ** Changes in behavior
143 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
144 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
145 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
146 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
148 ** Improved robustness
150 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
151 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
152 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
153 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
154 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
155 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
156 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
157 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
158 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
162 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
163 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
165 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
166 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
167 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
168 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
169 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
172 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
176 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
177 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
178 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
182 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
183 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
184 data was read, or on process exit.
185 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
187 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
188 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
189 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
190 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
192 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
193 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
194 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
195 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
197 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
198 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
200 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
201 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
203 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
204 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
205 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
207 ** Changes in behavior
209 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
210 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
211 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
213 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
214 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
216 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
217 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
218 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
221 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
225 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
227 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
228 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
229 install: Never copies xattrs
231 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
232 from overwriting any existing destination file
234 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
235 mode where this feature is available.
237 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
238 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
239 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
240 do not modify the destination at all.
242 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
244 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
248 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
249 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
251 cp uses much less memory in some situations
253 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
254 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
256 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
257 processing the first file name
259 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
260 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
261 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
262 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
264 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
265 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
267 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
268 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
271 ** Changes in behavior
273 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
274 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
276 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
277 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
278 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
280 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
281 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
283 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
285 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
286 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
287 is still marked with a '+'.
290 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
294 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
295 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
299 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
300 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
301 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
302 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
303 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
304 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
306 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
307 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
309 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
310 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
312 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
314 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
315 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
316 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
318 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
319 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
321 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
322 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
323 used to factor large numbers.
325 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
328 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
330 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
332 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
333 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
335 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
336 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
337 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
338 maximum command-line (argv) length.
340 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
341 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
342 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
344 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
345 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
349 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
351 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
352 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
354 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
355 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
357 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
359 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
360 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
364 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
365 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
366 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
368 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
370 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
371 no matter how many files are in a given directory
373 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
374 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
375 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
377 ** Changes in behavior
379 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
380 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
383 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
387 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
389 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
390 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
391 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
393 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
394 with no USERNAME argument.
396 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
397 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
398 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
400 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
401 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
402 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
403 number of fields for some inputs.
405 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
406 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
408 ** Changes in behavior
410 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
411 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
414 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
418 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
420 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
421 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
422 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
423 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
425 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
426 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
428 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
429 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
431 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
432 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
434 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
435 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
436 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
437 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
439 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
440 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
441 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
442 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
443 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
444 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
446 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
447 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
449 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
450 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
451 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
453 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
454 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
456 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
457 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
459 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
460 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
461 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
462 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
464 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
465 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
467 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
468 in more cases when a directory is empty.
470 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
471 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
472 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
476 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
477 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
479 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
480 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
481 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
482 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
486 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
487 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
489 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
491 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
495 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
496 which have negative errno values.
500 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
504 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
508 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
509 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
512 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
516 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
517 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
518 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
520 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
521 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
522 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
523 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
527 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
528 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
529 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
530 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
533 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
537 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
539 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
540 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
541 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
544 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
548 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
549 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
551 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
553 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
555 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
557 ** Programs no longer installed by default
561 ** Changes in behavior
563 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
564 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
566 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
567 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
569 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
570 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
571 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
575 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
576 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
577 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
578 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
579 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
580 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
581 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
582 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
583 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
584 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
585 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
587 The following commands and options now support the standard size
588 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
589 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
592 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
595 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
596 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
597 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
599 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
600 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
601 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
606 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
607 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
608 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
609 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
611 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
612 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
613 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
614 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
615 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
616 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
617 of "make check" fail.
619 ** Remove deprecated options
621 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
622 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
623 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
624 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
625 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
627 ** Improved robustness
629 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
630 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
631 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
632 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
633 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
634 loss of the contents of a/f.
636 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
637 in its 35-colon command-line argument
641 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
642 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
643 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
645 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
646 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
647 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
648 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
650 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
651 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
652 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
653 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
654 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
655 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
656 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
657 destination is a symlink.
659 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
661 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
662 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
664 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
665 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
667 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
669 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
670 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
672 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
673 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
675 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
678 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
679 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
681 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
682 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
684 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
685 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
686 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
687 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
689 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
690 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
691 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
693 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
694 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
695 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
697 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
698 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
699 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
700 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
702 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
703 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
704 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
706 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
707 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
709 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
710 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
712 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
714 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
715 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
716 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
718 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
719 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
721 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
722 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
724 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
725 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
727 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
728 [present in the original version]
731 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
735 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
737 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
738 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
739 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
741 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
742 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
744 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
748 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
749 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
751 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
752 support but with insufficient /proc support.
754 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
755 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
757 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
758 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
759 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
760 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
761 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
762 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
764 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
765 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
768 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
769 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
771 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
774 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
775 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
776 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
778 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
779 directory is unreadable.
781 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
782 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
783 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
785 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
786 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
787 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
788 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
789 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
792 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
793 Before it would print nothing.
795 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
797 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
798 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
799 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
800 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
801 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
802 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
803 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
804 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
806 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
810 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
811 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
812 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
814 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
815 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
816 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
817 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
820 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
824 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
825 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
826 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
827 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
828 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
829 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
830 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
832 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
833 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
834 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
835 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
836 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
837 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
838 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
839 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
841 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
842 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
843 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
846 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
850 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
851 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
853 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
854 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
855 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
857 ** Improved robustness
859 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
860 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
861 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
864 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
868 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
869 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
870 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
871 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
872 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
874 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
878 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
881 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
885 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
886 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
887 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
888 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
890 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
891 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
893 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
894 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
895 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
898 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
900 ** Improved robustness
902 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
903 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
905 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
906 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
907 or NFS-mounted partition.
909 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
910 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
914 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
915 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
916 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
917 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
918 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
919 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
921 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
922 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
924 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
925 or neglect to report file removal.
927 For the "groups" command:
929 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
930 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
932 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
934 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
936 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
940 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
941 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
944 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
946 ** Changes in behavior
948 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
949 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
950 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
951 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
953 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
954 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
955 a final `./' or `../' component.
957 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
958 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
961 ** Infrastructure changes
963 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
964 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
965 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
966 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
970 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
973 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
974 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
975 dirent.d_type support.
977 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
978 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
980 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
981 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
982 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
983 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
986 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
988 ** Changes in behavior
990 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
994 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
995 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
999 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1000 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1001 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1003 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1004 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1006 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1007 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1009 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1011 ** Improved robustness
1013 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1014 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1015 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1017 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1018 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1021 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1022 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1024 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1025 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1027 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1028 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1030 ** Changes in behavior
1032 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1033 where the two are distinct.
1035 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1036 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1037 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1038 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1039 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1040 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1041 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1042 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1043 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1044 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1045 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1046 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1047 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1048 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1049 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1050 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1051 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1053 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1054 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1055 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1057 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1058 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1059 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1060 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1063 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1064 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1068 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1069 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1070 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1071 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1073 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1074 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1075 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1077 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1078 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1079 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1080 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1081 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1084 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1085 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1087 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1088 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1089 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1090 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1092 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1093 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1094 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1096 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1097 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1098 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1099 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1101 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1102 and sticky) with the -m option.
1104 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1105 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1106 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1107 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1108 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1110 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1111 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1113 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1117 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1118 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1119 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1120 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1122 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1124 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1126 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1127 silently ignoring one of them.
1129 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1130 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1131 containing this change was 5.92.
1133 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1134 automatically newline terminated.
1136 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1137 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1138 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1139 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1142 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1143 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1144 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1147 ** Scheduled for removal
1149 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1150 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1152 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1153 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1154 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1155 command to unlink a directory.
1157 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1158 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1159 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1160 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1164 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1165 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1166 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1167 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1168 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1169 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1173 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1174 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1176 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1178 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1179 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1180 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1182 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1183 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1186 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1187 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1189 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1190 list directories before files.
1192 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1193 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1194 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1195 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1198 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1200 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1202 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1203 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1204 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1206 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1207 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1211 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1212 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1213 usually printing nothing.
1215 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1217 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1218 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1219 them with hard-linked directories.
1221 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1222 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1223 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1225 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1226 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1227 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1229 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1232 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1233 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1235 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1236 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1238 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1239 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1241 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1242 all command-line arguments.
1244 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1246 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1248 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1249 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1251 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1253 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1254 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1255 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1256 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1257 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1259 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1260 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1262 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1263 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1264 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1265 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1267 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1269 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1273 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1274 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1276 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1277 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1279 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1280 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1282 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1283 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1285 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1286 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1288 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1290 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1291 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1292 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1295 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1297 ** Build-related bug fixes
1299 installing .mo files would fail
1302 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1306 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1308 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1311 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1315 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1316 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1320 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1322 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1323 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1325 ** Deprecated options
1327 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1328 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1330 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1334 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1336 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1337 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1338 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1339 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1341 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1344 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1350 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1355 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1357 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1359 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1360 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1361 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1363 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1364 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1365 problematic usages. These include:
1367 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1368 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1369 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1370 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1371 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1372 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1373 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1374 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1375 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1377 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1378 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1380 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1381 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1382 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1383 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1385 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1386 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1387 between binary and text files.
1389 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1393 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1397 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1398 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1400 head tac tail tee tr
1401 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1403 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1404 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1406 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1407 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1408 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1410 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1412 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1414 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1415 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1416 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1420 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1422 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1423 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1425 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1426 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1427 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1431 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1432 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1436 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1437 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1438 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1442 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1443 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1447 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1449 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1451 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1455 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1456 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1457 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1459 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1460 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1461 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1462 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1463 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1465 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1469 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1470 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1471 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1473 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1475 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1476 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1477 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1478 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1480 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1482 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1483 rather than silently wrapping around.
1485 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1486 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1488 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1489 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1491 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1492 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1493 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1494 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1496 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1498 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1500 ** Improved robustness
1502 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1503 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1504 no matter how large the result.
1506 ** Improved portability
1508 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1509 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1511 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1513 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1514 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1515 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1517 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1518 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1522 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1523 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1525 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1527 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1528 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1529 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1530 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1532 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1533 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1535 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1536 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1537 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1539 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1541 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1542 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1544 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1545 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1547 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1549 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1550 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1552 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1553 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1555 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1556 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1557 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1559 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1561 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1563 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1567 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1569 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1570 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1571 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1573 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1574 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1576 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1577 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1578 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1580 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1581 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1583 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1584 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1585 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1586 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1588 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1589 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1591 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1592 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1593 the file system does not support it.
1595 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1597 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1598 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1600 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1602 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1603 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1605 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1606 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1607 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1608 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1610 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1611 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1614 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1615 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1616 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1617 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1619 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1620 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1621 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1622 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1624 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1625 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1627 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1629 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1630 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1631 reporting incorrect results.
1635 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1636 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1638 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1641 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1643 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1644 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1646 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1647 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1649 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1652 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1653 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1654 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1655 the file name does not look like a page range.
1657 printf has several changes:
1659 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1660 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1662 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1663 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1664 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1666 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1667 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1670 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1671 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1673 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1674 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1676 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1678 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1679 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1681 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1683 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1685 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1686 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1687 when first encountering the directory.
1691 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1692 output; POSIX requires this.
1694 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1695 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1697 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1699 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1700 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1702 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1703 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1705 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1706 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1707 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1708 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1709 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1710 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1711 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1713 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1714 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1715 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1717 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1718 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1720 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1722 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1724 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1725 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1726 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1727 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1729 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1733 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1734 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1735 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1736 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1737 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1739 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1740 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1741 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1743 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1744 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1746 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1747 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1749 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1750 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1751 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1752 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1753 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1755 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1756 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1758 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1759 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1761 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1763 nocreat do not create the output file
1764 excl fail if the output file already exists
1765 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1766 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1768 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1770 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1771 direct use direct I/O for data
1772 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1773 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1774 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1775 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1776 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1778 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1780 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1781 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1784 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1785 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1786 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1787 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1788 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1789 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1791 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1792 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1794 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1797 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1799 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1801 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1802 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1804 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1805 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1806 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1808 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1809 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1810 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1812 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1814 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1815 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1817 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1818 for compatibility with bash.
1820 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1822 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1823 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1824 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1825 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1827 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1828 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1830 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1831 ls supports TABSIZE.
1832 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1833 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1834 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1836 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1839 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1841 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1842 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1843 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1844 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1845 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1846 an offset, not as a file name.
1848 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1849 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1851 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1852 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1854 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1855 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1857 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1858 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1859 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1861 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1862 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1864 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1865 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1869 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1871 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1873 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1877 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1878 or more arguments between partitions.
1880 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1881 holes in the destination.
1883 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1884 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1885 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1886 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1887 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1888 terminates immediately.
1890 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1892 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1894 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1895 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1896 not the empty string.
1898 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1899 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1903 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1904 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1905 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1908 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1915 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1919 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1920 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1922 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1923 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1925 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1926 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1927 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1930 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1934 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1935 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1937 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1938 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1940 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1941 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1942 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1944 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1946 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1949 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1951 ** Configuration option
1953 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1954 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1958 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1959 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1963 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1964 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1965 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1968 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1969 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1970 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1971 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1972 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1973 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1974 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1977 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1981 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1982 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1983 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1985 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1986 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1988 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1990 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1991 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1992 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1993 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1995 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1997 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1998 not just the ones that reference directories
2000 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2001 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2003 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2004 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2005 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2007 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2008 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2009 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2010 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2011 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2012 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2014 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2019 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2020 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2022 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2024 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2026 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2028 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2029 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2031 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2032 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2034 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2036 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2040 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2042 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2044 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2045 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2046 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2047 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2048 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2050 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2051 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2053 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2054 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2056 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2057 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2059 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2060 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2061 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2065 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2066 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2067 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2068 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2069 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2070 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2071 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2072 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2073 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2074 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2075 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2076 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2077 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2078 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2080 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2082 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2083 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2085 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2087 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2089 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2090 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2092 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2094 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2095 without a trailing newline.
2097 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2098 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2100 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2103 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2107 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2109 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2111 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2112 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2113 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2114 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2116 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2118 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2119 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2120 be printed without leading spaces.
2122 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2123 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2128 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2129 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2130 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2132 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2134 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2135 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2137 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2138 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2140 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2141 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2143 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2145 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2147 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2149 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2150 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2152 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2154 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2156 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2157 byte offsets are specified.
2160 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2163 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2166 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2167 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2168 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2169 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2170 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2171 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2172 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2173 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2174 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2175 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2176 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2177 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2178 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2179 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2180 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2181 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2182 directory where M has write access.
2183 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2184 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2185 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2188 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2189 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2190 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2191 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2192 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2193 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2194 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2195 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2196 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2197 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2198 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2199 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2200 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2201 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2202 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2203 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2204 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2205 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2206 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2207 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2208 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2209 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2210 appeared one additional time.
2212 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2213 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2214 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2215 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2218 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2219 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2220 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2221 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2222 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2223 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2224 if there were more than 338.
2226 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2227 - false --help now exits nonzero
2230 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2231 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2232 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2233 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2236 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2237 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2238 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2239 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2240 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2243 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2244 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2245 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2246 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2247 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2248 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2249 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2252 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2253 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2254 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2255 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2256 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2257 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2259 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2260 under certain unusual conditions
2261 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2262 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2265 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2266 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2267 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2268 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2269 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2270 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2271 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2272 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2273 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2274 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2275 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2276 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2277 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2278 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2279 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2280 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2283 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2284 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2287 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2288 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2289 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2290 involving hard-linked directories
2291 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2292 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2293 character-special and block files
2296 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2297 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2298 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2299 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2300 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2301 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2302 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2303 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2304 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2306 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2307 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2308 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2309 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2310 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2311 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2312 specified on the command line.
2313 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2314 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2315 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2316 the first file untouched.
2317 * readlink: new program
2318 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2319 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2320 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2321 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2322 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2323 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2326 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2327 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2328 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2329 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2330 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2331 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2332 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2333 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2334 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2335 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2336 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2337 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2339 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2340 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2341 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2343 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2344 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2345 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2346 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2347 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2348 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2349 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2350 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2353 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2354 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2357 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2358 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2359 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2360 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2361 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2362 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2363 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2366 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2367 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2369 ========================================================================
2370 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2371 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2374 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2376 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2377 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2378 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2379 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2380 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2381 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2382 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2383 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2384 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2385 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2386 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2387 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2389 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2390 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2391 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2392 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2394 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2397 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2399 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2400 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2401 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2402 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2403 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2404 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2405 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2408 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2409 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2410 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2411 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2412 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2413 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2414 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2415 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2416 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2417 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2418 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2419 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2420 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2421 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2422 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2423 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2425 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2426 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2428 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2429 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2430 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2431 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2432 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2433 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2435 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2436 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2437 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2438 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2439 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2440 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2441 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2443 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2444 the source files in the following example:
2445 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2446 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2447 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2448 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2449 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2450 links between source files with --preserve=links
2451 * cp accepts new options:
2452 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2453 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2454 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2455 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2456 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2457 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2458 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2459 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2460 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2462 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2463 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2464 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2465 even though it's older than dest.
2466 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2467 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2468 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2469 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2470 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2472 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2473 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2474 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2475 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2476 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2477 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2478 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2480 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2481 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2482 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2484 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2485 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2486 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2487 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2488 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2489 This is the default.
2491 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2492 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2493 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2494 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2495 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2497 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2500 ========================================================================
2501 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2502 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2505 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2506 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2508 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2509 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2510 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2511 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2512 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2514 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2515 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2516 that specifies a non-directory
2519 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2520 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2521 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2522 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2523 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2524 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2525 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2526 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2527 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2528 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2529 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2530 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2531 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2532 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2533 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2534 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2535 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2536 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2537 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2538 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2539 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2540 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2541 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2542 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2544 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2545 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2546 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2548 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2550 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2551 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2553 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2554 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2555 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2556 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2557 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2559 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2560 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2561 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2562 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2563 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2565 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2567 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2568 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2569 * still more portability fixes
2570 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2571 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2573 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2575 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2577 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2579 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2580 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2581 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2582 there is any time remaining
2583 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2585 ========================================================================
2586 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2587 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2589 This package began as the union of the following:
2590 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2592 ========================================================================
2594 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2596 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2597 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2598 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2599 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2600 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2601 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.