1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (2006-??-??) [unstable]
7 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
8 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
9 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
11 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
12 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
15 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
16 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
18 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
19 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
21 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
22 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
24 ** Changes in behavior
26 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
27 where the two are distinct.
29 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
30 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
31 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
33 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
34 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
35 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
36 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
39 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
40 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
42 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
43 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
44 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by chrooted
45 bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
47 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
48 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
49 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
50 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
51 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
54 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
55 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
56 successful and the output is easier to parse.
58 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
59 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
60 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
61 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
63 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
64 and sticky) with the -m option.
66 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
67 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
68 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
69 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
70 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
72 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
73 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
75 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
79 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
80 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
81 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
82 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
84 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
86 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
88 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
89 silently ignoring one of them.
91 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" when conforming
92 to POSIX 1003.1-2001, since this is a pure extension to POSIX.
93 However, "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
95 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
96 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
97 containing this change was 5.92.
99 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
100 automatically newline terminated.
102 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
103 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
104 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
105 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
108 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
109 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
110 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
113 ** Scheduled for removal
115 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
116 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
118 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
119 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
120 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
121 command to unlink a directory.
123 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
124 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
125 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
126 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
130 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
131 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
132 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
133 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
134 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
138 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
139 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
141 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
143 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
144 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
145 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
147 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
148 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
151 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
152 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
154 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
155 list directories before files.
157 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
158 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
159 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
160 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
163 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
165 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
166 list of NUL-terminated file names.
170 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
171 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
172 usually printing nothing.
174 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
176 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
177 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
178 them with hard-linked directories.
180 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
181 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
182 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
184 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
185 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
186 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
188 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
189 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
191 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally
193 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
194 all command-line arguments.
196 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
198 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
200 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
201 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
203 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
205 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
206 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
207 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
208 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
209 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
211 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
212 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
214 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
215 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
216 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
217 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
219 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
221 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
225 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
226 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
228 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
229 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
231 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
232 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
234 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
235 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
237 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
238 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
240 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
242 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
243 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
244 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
247 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
249 ** Build-related bug fixes
251 installing .mo files would fail
254 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
258 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
260 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
263 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
267 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
268 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
272 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
274 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
275 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
277 ** Deprecated options
279 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
280 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
282 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
286 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
288 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
289 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
290 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
291 conforming to older POSIX versions.
293 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
296 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
302 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
307 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
309 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
311 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
312 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
313 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
315 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
316 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
317 problematic usages. These include:
319 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
320 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
321 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
322 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
323 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
324 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
325 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
326 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
327 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
329 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
330 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
332 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
333 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
334 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
335 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
337 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
338 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
339 between binary and text files.
341 The following programs now always use text input/output:
345 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
349 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
350 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
353 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
355 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
356 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
358 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
359 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
360 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
362 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
364 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
366 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
367 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
368 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
372 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
374 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
375 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
377 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
378 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
379 blocks until F contains N blocks.
383 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
384 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
388 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
389 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
390 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
394 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
395 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
399 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
401 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
403 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
407 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
408 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
409 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
411 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
412 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
413 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
414 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
415 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
417 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
421 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
422 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
423 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
425 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
427 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
428 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
429 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
430 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
432 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
434 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
435 rather than silently wrapping around.
437 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
438 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
440 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
441 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
443 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
444 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
445 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
448 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
450 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
452 ** Improved robustness
454 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
455 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
456 no matter how large the result.
458 ** Improved portability
460 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
461 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
463 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
465 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
466 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
467 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
469 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
470 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
474 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
475 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
477 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
479 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
480 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
481 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
482 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
484 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
485 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
487 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
488 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
489 categories if not specified by dircolors.
491 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
493 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
494 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
496 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
497 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
499 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
501 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
502 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
504 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
505 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
507 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
508 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
509 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
511 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
513 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
515 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
519 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
521 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
522 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
523 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
525 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
526 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
528 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
529 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
530 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
532 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
533 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
535 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
536 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
537 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
538 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
540 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
541 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
543 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
544 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
545 the file system does not support it.
547 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
549 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
550 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
552 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
554 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
555 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
557 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
558 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
559 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
560 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
562 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
563 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
566 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
567 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
568 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
569 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
571 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
572 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
573 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
574 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
576 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
577 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
579 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
581 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
582 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
583 reporting incorrect results.
587 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
588 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
590 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
593 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
595 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
596 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
598 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
599 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
601 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
604 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
605 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
606 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
607 the file name does not look like a page range.
609 printf has several changes:
611 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
612 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
614 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
615 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
616 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
618 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
619 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
622 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
623 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
625 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
626 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
628 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
630 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
631 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
633 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
635 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
637 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
638 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
639 when first encountering the directory.
643 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
644 output; POSIX requires this.
646 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
647 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
649 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
651 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
652 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
654 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
655 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
657 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
658 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
659 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
660 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
661 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
662 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
663 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
665 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
666 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
667 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
669 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
670 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
672 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
674 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
676 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
677 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
678 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
679 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
681 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
685 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
686 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
687 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
688 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
689 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
691 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
692 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
693 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
695 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
696 is longer than PATH_MAX.
698 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
699 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
701 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
702 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
703 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
704 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
705 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
707 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
708 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
710 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
711 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
713 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
715 nocreat do not create the output file
716 excl fail if the output file already exists
717 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
718 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
720 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
722 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
723 direct use direct I/O for data
724 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
725 sync likewise, but also for metadata
726 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
727 nofollow do not follow symlinks
728 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
730 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
732 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
733 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
736 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
737 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
738 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
739 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
740 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
741 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
743 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
744 list of NUL-terminated file names.
746 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
749 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
751 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
753 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
754 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
756 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
757 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
758 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
760 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
761 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
762 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
764 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
766 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
767 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
769 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
770 for compatibility with bash.
772 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
774 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
775 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
776 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
777 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
779 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
780 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
782 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
784 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
785 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
786 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
788 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
791 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
793 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
794 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
795 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
796 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
797 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
798 an offset, not as a file name.
800 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
801 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
803 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
804 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
806 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
807 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
809 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
810 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
811 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
813 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
814 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
816 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
817 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
821 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
823 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
825 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
829 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
830 or more arguments between partitions.
832 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
833 holes in the destination.
835 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
836 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
837 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
838 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
839 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
840 terminates immediately.
842 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
844 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
846 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
847 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
848 not the empty string.
850 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
851 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
855 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
856 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
857 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
860 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
867 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
871 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
872 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
874 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
875 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
877 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
878 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
879 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
882 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
886 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
887 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
889 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
890 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
892 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
893 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
894 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
896 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
898 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
901 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
903 ** Configuration option
905 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
906 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
910 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
911 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
915 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
916 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
917 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
920 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
921 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
922 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
923 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
924 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
925 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
926 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
929 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
933 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
934 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
935 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
937 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
938 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
940 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
942 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
943 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
944 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
945 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
947 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
949 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
950 not just the ones that reference directories
952 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
953 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
955 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
956 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
957 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
959 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
960 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
961 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
962 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
963 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
964 ragged when a datum was too wide.
966 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
971 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
972 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
974 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
976 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
978 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
980 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
981 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
983 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
984 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
986 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
988 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
992 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
994 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
996 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
997 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
998 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
999 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1000 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1002 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1003 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1005 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1006 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1008 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1009 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1011 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1012 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1013 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1017 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1018 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1019 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1020 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1021 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1022 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1023 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1024 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1025 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1026 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1027 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1028 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1029 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1030 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1032 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1034 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1035 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1037 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1039 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1041 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1042 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1044 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1046 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1047 without a trailing newline.
1049 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1050 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1052 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1055 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1059 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1061 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1063 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1064 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1065 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1066 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1068 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1070 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1071 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1072 be printed without leading spaces.
1074 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1075 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1080 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1081 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1082 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1084 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1086 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1087 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1089 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1090 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1092 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1093 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1095 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1097 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1099 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1101 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1102 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1104 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1106 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1108 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1109 byte offsets are specified.
1112 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1115 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1118 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1119 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1120 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1121 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1122 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1123 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1124 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1125 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1126 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1127 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1128 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1129 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1130 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1131 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1132 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1133 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1134 directory where M has write access.
1135 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1136 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1137 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1140 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1141 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1142 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1143 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1144 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1145 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1146 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1147 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1148 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1149 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1150 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1151 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1152 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1153 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1154 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1155 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1156 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1157 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1158 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1159 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1160 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1161 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1162 appeared one additional time.
1164 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1165 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1166 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1167 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1170 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1171 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1172 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1173 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1174 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1175 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1176 if there were more than 338.
1178 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1179 - false --help now exits nonzero
1182 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1183 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1184 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1185 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1188 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1189 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1190 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1191 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1192 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1195 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1196 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1197 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1198 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1199 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1200 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1201 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1204 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1205 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1206 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1207 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1208 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1209 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1211 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1212 under certain unusual conditions
1213 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1214 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1217 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1218 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1219 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1220 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1221 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1222 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1223 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1224 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1225 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1226 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1227 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1228 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1229 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1230 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1231 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1232 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1235 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1236 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1239 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1240 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1241 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1242 involving hard-linked directories
1243 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1244 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1245 character-special and block files
1248 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1249 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1250 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1251 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1252 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1253 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1254 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1255 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1256 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1258 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1259 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1260 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1261 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1262 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1263 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1264 specified on the command line.
1265 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1266 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1267 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1268 the first file untouched.
1269 * readlink: new program
1270 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1271 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1272 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1273 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1274 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1275 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1278 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1279 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1280 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1281 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1282 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1283 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1284 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1285 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1286 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1287 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1288 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1289 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1291 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1292 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1293 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1295 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1296 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1297 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1298 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1299 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1300 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1301 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1302 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1305 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1306 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1309 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1310 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1311 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1312 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1313 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1314 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1315 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1318 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1319 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1321 ========================================================================
1322 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1323 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1326 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1328 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1329 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1330 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1331 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1332 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1333 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1334 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1335 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1336 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1337 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1338 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1339 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1341 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1342 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1343 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1344 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1346 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1349 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1351 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1352 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1353 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1354 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1355 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1356 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1357 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1360 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1361 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1362 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1363 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1364 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1365 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1366 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1367 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1368 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1369 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1370 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1371 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1372 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1373 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1374 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1375 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1377 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1378 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1380 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1381 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1382 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1383 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1384 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1385 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1387 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1388 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1389 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1390 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1391 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1392 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1393 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1395 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1396 the source files in the following example:
1397 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1398 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1399 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1400 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1401 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1402 links between source files with --preserve=links
1403 * cp accepts new options:
1404 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1405 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1406 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1407 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1408 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1409 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1410 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1411 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1412 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1414 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1415 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1416 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1417 even though it's older than dest.
1418 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1419 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1420 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1421 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1422 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1424 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1425 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1426 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1427 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1428 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1429 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1430 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1432 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1433 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1434 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1436 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1437 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1438 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1439 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1440 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1441 This is the default.
1443 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1444 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1445 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1446 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1447 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1449 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1452 ========================================================================
1453 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1454 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1457 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1458 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1460 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1461 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1462 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1463 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1464 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1466 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1467 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1468 that specifies a non-directory
1471 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1472 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1473 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1474 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1475 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1476 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1477 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1478 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1479 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1480 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1481 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1482 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1483 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1484 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1485 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1486 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1487 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1488 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1489 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1490 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1491 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1492 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1493 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1494 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1496 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1497 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1498 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1500 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1502 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1503 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1505 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1506 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1507 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1508 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1509 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1511 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1512 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1513 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1514 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1515 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1517 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1519 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1520 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1521 * still more portability fixes
1522 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1523 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1525 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1527 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1529 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1531 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1532 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1533 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1534 there is any time remaining
1535 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1537 ========================================================================
1538 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1539 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1541 This package began as the union of the following:
1542 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.