1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 ** Programs no longer installed by default
14 ** Changes in behavior
16 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
17 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
19 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
20 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
21 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
25 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
27 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
28 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
29 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
31 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
32 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
33 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
38 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
39 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
40 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
41 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
43 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
44 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
45 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
46 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
47 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
48 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
51 ** Remove deprecated options
53 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
54 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
55 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
56 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
57 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
59 ** Improved robustness
61 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
62 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
63 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
64 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
65 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
66 loss of the contents of a/f.
68 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
69 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
73 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
74 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
75 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
76 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
78 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
79 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
80 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
81 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
82 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
83 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
84 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
85 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
86 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
87 the destination is a symlink.
89 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
91 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
92 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
94 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
95 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
97 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
99 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
100 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
102 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
105 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
106 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
108 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
109 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
111 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
112 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
113 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
114 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
116 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
117 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
118 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
120 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
121 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
122 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
124 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
125 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
126 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
127 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
129 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
130 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
132 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
133 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
134 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
136 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
137 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
139 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
140 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
142 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
143 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
146 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
150 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
152 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
153 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
154 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
156 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
157 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
159 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
163 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
164 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
166 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
167 support but with insufficient /proc support.
169 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
170 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
172 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
173 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
174 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
175 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
176 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
177 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
179 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
180 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
183 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
184 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
186 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
189 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
190 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
191 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
193 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
194 directory is unreadable.
196 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
197 Before it would print nothing.
199 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
203 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
204 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
205 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
207 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
208 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
209 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
210 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
213 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
217 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
218 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
219 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
220 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
221 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
222 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
223 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
225 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
226 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
227 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
228 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
229 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
230 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
231 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
232 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
234 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
235 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
236 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
239 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
243 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
244 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
246 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
247 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
248 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
250 ** Improved robustness
252 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
253 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
254 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
257 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
261 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
262 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
263 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
264 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
265 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
267 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
271 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
274 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
278 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
279 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
280 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
281 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
283 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
284 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
286 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
287 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
288 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
291 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
293 ** Improved robustness
295 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
296 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
298 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
299 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
300 or NFS-mounted partition.
302 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
303 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
307 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
308 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
309 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
310 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
311 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
312 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
314 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
315 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
317 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
318 or neglect to report file removal.
320 For the "groups" command:
322 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
323 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
325 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
327 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
329 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
333 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
334 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
337 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
339 ** Changes in behavior
341 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
342 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
343 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
344 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
346 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
347 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
348 a final `./' or `../' component.
350 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
351 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
354 ** Infrastructure changes
356 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
357 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
358 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
359 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
363 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
366 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
367 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
368 dirent.d_type support.
370 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
371 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
373 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
374 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
375 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
376 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
379 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
381 ** Changes in behavior
383 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
387 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
388 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
392 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
393 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
394 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
396 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
397 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
399 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
400 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
402 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
404 ** Improved robustness
406 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
407 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
408 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
410 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
411 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
414 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
415 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
417 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
418 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
420 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
421 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
423 ** Changes in behavior
425 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
426 where the two are distinct.
428 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
429 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
430 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
431 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
432 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
433 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
434 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
435 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
436 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
437 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
438 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
439 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
440 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
441 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
442 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
443 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
444 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
446 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
447 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
448 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
450 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
451 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
452 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
453 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
456 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
457 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
461 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
462 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
463 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
464 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
466 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
467 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
468 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
470 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
471 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
472 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
473 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
474 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
477 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
478 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
480 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
481 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
482 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
483 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
485 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
486 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
487 successful and the output is easier to parse.
489 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
490 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
491 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
492 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
494 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
495 and sticky) with the -m option.
497 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
498 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
499 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
500 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
501 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
503 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
504 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
506 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
510 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
511 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
512 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
513 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
515 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
517 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
519 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
520 silently ignoring one of them.
522 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
523 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
524 containing this change was 5.92.
526 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
527 automatically newline terminated.
529 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
530 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
531 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
532 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
535 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
536 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
537 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
540 ** Scheduled for removal
542 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
543 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
545 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
546 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
547 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
548 command to unlink a directory.
550 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
551 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
552 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
553 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
557 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
558 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
559 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
560 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
561 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
562 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
566 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
567 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
569 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
571 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
572 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
573 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
575 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
576 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
579 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
580 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
582 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
583 list directories before files.
585 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
586 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
587 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
588 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
591 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
593 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
595 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
596 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
597 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
599 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
600 list of NUL-terminated file names.
604 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
605 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
606 usually printing nothing.
608 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
610 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
611 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
612 them with hard-linked directories.
614 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
615 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
616 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
618 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
619 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
620 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
622 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
625 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
626 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
628 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
629 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
631 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
632 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
634 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
635 all command-line arguments.
637 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
639 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
641 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
642 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
644 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
646 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
647 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
648 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
649 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
650 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
652 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
653 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
655 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
656 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
657 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
658 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
660 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
662 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
666 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
667 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
669 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
670 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
672 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
673 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
675 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
676 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
678 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
679 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
681 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
683 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
684 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
685 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
688 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
690 ** Build-related bug fixes
692 installing .mo files would fail
695 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
699 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
701 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
704 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
708 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
709 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
713 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
715 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
716 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
718 ** Deprecated options
720 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
721 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
723 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
727 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
729 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
730 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
731 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
732 conforming to older POSIX versions.
734 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
737 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
743 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
748 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
750 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
752 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
753 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
754 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
756 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
757 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
758 problematic usages. These include:
760 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
761 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
762 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
763 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
764 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
765 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
766 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
767 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
768 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
770 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
771 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
773 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
774 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
775 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
776 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
778 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
779 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
780 between binary and text files.
782 The following programs now always use text input/output:
786 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
790 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
791 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
794 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
796 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
797 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
799 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
800 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
801 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
803 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
805 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
807 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
808 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
809 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
813 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
815 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
816 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
818 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
819 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
820 blocks until F contains N blocks.
824 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
825 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
829 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
830 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
831 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
835 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
836 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
840 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
842 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
844 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
848 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
849 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
850 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
852 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
853 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
854 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
855 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
856 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
858 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
862 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
863 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
864 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
866 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
868 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
869 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
870 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
871 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
873 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
875 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
876 rather than silently wrapping around.
878 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
879 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
881 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
882 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
884 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
885 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
886 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
889 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
891 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
893 ** Improved robustness
895 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
896 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
897 no matter how large the result.
899 ** Improved portability
901 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
902 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
904 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
906 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
907 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
908 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
910 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
911 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
915 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
916 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
918 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
920 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
921 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
922 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
923 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
925 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
926 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
928 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
929 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
930 categories if not specified by dircolors.
932 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
934 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
935 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
937 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
938 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
940 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
942 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
943 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
945 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
946 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
948 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
949 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
950 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
952 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
954 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
956 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
960 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
962 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
963 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
964 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
966 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
967 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
969 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
970 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
971 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
973 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
974 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
976 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
977 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
978 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
979 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
981 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
982 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
984 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
985 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
986 the file system does not support it.
988 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
990 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
991 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
993 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
995 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
996 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
998 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
999 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1000 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1001 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1003 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1004 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1007 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1008 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1009 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1010 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1012 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1013 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1014 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1015 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1017 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1018 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1020 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1022 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1023 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1024 reporting incorrect results.
1028 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1029 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1031 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1034 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1036 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1037 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1039 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1040 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1042 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1045 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1046 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1047 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1048 the file name does not look like a page range.
1050 printf has several changes:
1052 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1053 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1055 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1056 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1057 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1059 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1060 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1063 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1064 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1066 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1067 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1069 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1071 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1072 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1074 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1076 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1078 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1079 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1080 when first encountering the directory.
1084 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1085 output; POSIX requires this.
1087 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1088 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1090 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1092 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1093 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1095 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1096 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1098 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1099 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1100 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1101 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1102 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1103 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1104 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1106 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1107 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1108 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1110 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1111 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1113 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1115 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1117 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1118 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1119 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1120 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1122 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1126 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1127 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1128 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1129 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1130 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1132 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1133 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1134 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1136 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1137 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1139 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1140 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1142 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1143 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1144 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1145 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1146 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1148 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1149 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1151 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1152 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1154 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1156 nocreat do not create the output file
1157 excl fail if the output file already exists
1158 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1159 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1161 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1163 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1164 direct use direct I/O for data
1165 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1166 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1167 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1168 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1169 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1171 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1173 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1174 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1177 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1178 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1179 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1180 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1181 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1182 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1184 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1185 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1187 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1190 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1192 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1194 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1195 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1197 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1198 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1199 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1201 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1202 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1203 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1205 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1207 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1208 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1210 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1211 for compatibility with bash.
1213 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1215 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1216 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1217 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1218 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1220 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1221 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1223 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1224 ls supports TABSIZE.
1225 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1226 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1227 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1229 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1232 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1234 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1235 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1236 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1237 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1238 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1239 an offset, not as a file name.
1241 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1242 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1244 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1245 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1247 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1248 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1250 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1251 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1252 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1254 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1255 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1257 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1258 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1262 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1264 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1266 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1270 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1271 or more arguments between partitions.
1273 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1274 holes in the destination.
1276 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1277 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1278 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1279 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1280 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1281 terminates immediately.
1283 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1285 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1287 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1288 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1289 not the empty string.
1291 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1292 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1296 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1297 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1298 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1301 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1308 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1312 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1313 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1315 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1316 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1318 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1319 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1320 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1323 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1327 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1328 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1330 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1331 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1333 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1334 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1335 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1337 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1339 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1342 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1344 ** Configuration option
1346 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1347 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1351 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1352 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1356 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1357 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1358 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1361 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1362 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1363 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1364 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1365 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1366 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1367 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1370 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1374 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1375 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1376 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1378 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1379 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1381 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1383 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1384 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1385 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1386 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1388 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1390 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1391 not just the ones that reference directories
1393 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1394 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1396 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1397 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1398 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1400 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1401 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1402 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1403 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1404 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1405 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1407 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1412 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1413 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1415 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1417 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1419 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1421 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1422 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1424 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1425 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1427 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1429 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1433 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1435 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1437 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1438 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1439 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1440 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1441 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1443 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1444 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1446 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1447 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1449 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1450 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1452 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1453 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1454 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1458 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1459 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1460 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1461 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1462 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1463 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1464 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1465 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1466 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1467 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1468 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1469 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1470 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1471 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1473 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1475 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1476 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1478 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1480 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1482 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1483 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1485 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1487 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1488 without a trailing newline.
1490 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1491 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1493 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1496 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1500 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1502 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1504 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1505 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1506 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1507 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1509 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1511 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1512 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1513 be printed without leading spaces.
1515 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1516 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1521 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1522 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1523 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1525 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1527 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1528 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1530 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1531 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1533 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1534 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1536 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1538 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1540 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1542 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1543 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1545 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1547 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1549 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1550 byte offsets are specified.
1553 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1556 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1559 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1560 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1561 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1562 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1563 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1564 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1565 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1566 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1567 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1568 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1569 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1570 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1571 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1572 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1573 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1574 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1575 directory where M has write access.
1576 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1577 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1578 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1581 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1582 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1583 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1584 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1585 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1586 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1587 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1588 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1589 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1590 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1591 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1592 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1593 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1594 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1595 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1596 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1597 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1598 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1599 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1600 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1601 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1602 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1603 appeared one additional time.
1605 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1606 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1607 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1608 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1611 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1612 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1613 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1614 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1615 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1616 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1617 if there were more than 338.
1619 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1620 - false --help now exits nonzero
1623 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1624 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1625 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1626 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1629 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1630 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1631 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1632 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1633 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1636 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1637 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1638 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1639 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1640 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1641 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1642 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1645 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1646 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1647 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1648 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1649 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1650 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1652 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1653 under certain unusual conditions
1654 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1655 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1658 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1659 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1660 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1661 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1662 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1663 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1664 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1665 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1666 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1667 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1668 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1669 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1670 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1671 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1672 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1673 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1676 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1677 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1680 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1681 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1682 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1683 involving hard-linked directories
1684 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1685 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1686 character-special and block files
1689 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1690 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1691 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1692 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1693 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1694 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1695 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1696 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1697 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1699 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1700 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1701 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1702 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1703 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1704 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1705 specified on the command line.
1706 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1707 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1708 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1709 the first file untouched.
1710 * readlink: new program
1711 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1712 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1713 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1714 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1715 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1716 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1719 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1720 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1721 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1722 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1723 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1724 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1725 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1726 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1727 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1728 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1729 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1730 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1732 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1733 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1734 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1736 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1737 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1738 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1739 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1740 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1741 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1742 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1743 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1746 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1747 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1750 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1751 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1752 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1753 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1754 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1755 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1756 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1759 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1760 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1762 ========================================================================
1763 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1764 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1767 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1769 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1770 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1771 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1772 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1773 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1774 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1775 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1776 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1777 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1778 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1779 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1780 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1782 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1783 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1784 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1785 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1787 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1790 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1792 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1793 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1794 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1795 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1796 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1797 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1798 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1801 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1802 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1803 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1804 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1805 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1806 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1807 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1808 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1809 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1810 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1811 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1812 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1813 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1814 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1815 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1816 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1818 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1819 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1821 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1822 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1823 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1824 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1825 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1826 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1828 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1829 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1830 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1831 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1832 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1833 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1834 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1836 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1837 the source files in the following example:
1838 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1839 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1840 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1841 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1842 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1843 links between source files with --preserve=links
1844 * cp accepts new options:
1845 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1846 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1847 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1848 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1849 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1850 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1851 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1852 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1853 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1855 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1856 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1857 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1858 even though it's older than dest.
1859 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1860 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1861 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1862 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1863 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1865 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1866 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1867 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1868 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1869 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1870 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1871 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1873 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1874 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1875 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1877 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1878 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1879 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1880 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1881 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1882 This is the default.
1884 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1885 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1886 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1887 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1888 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1890 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1893 ========================================================================
1894 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1895 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1898 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1899 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1901 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1902 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1903 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1904 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1905 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1907 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1908 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1909 that specifies a non-directory
1912 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1913 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1914 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1915 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1916 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1917 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1918 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1919 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1920 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1921 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1922 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1923 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1924 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1925 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1926 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1927 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1928 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1929 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1930 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1931 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1932 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1933 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1934 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1935 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1937 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1938 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1939 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1941 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1943 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1944 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1946 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1947 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1948 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1949 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1950 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1952 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1953 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1954 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1955 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1956 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1958 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1960 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1961 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1962 * still more portability fixes
1963 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1964 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1966 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1968 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1970 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1972 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1973 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1974 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1975 there is any time remaining
1976 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1978 ========================================================================
1979 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1980 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1982 This package began as the union of the following:
1983 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1985 ========================================================================
1987 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1990 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1991 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1992 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1993 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1994 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1995 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.