1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.1 (2005-??-??) [unstable]
5 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
6 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
7 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
8 conforming to older POSIX versions.
10 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
13 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
19 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
24 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
26 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
28 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
29 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
30 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
32 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
33 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
34 problematic usages. These include:
36 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
37 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
38 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
39 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
40 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
41 tail - main.c tail main.c tail -- - main.c
42 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
43 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
44 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
46 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
47 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
48 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
49 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
51 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
53 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
55 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
56 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
57 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
61 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
63 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
64 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
66 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
67 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
68 blocks until F contains N blocks.
72 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
73 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
77 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
78 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
79 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
83 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
85 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
87 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
91 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
92 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
93 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
95 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
96 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
97 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
98 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
99 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
101 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
105 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
106 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
107 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
109 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
110 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
111 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
112 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
114 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
116 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
117 rather than silently wrapping around.
119 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
120 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
122 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
123 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
125 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
126 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
127 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
130 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
132 ** Improved portability
134 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
136 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
137 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
138 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
140 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
141 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
145 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
146 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
148 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
149 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
151 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
152 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
154 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
155 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
157 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now closes it and then reopens it with an
158 unreadable file descriptor. (This step is skipped if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.)
159 This prevents the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
161 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
162 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
163 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
165 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
169 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
171 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
172 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
173 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
175 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
176 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
178 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
179 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
180 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
182 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
183 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
185 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
186 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
187 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
188 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
190 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
191 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
193 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
194 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
195 the file system does not support it.
197 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
199 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
200 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
202 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
204 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
205 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
207 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
208 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
209 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
210 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
212 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
213 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
216 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
217 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
218 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
219 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
221 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
222 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
223 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
224 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
226 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
227 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
229 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
231 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
232 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
233 reporting incorrect results.
237 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
238 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
240 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
241 value happens to be -1.
243 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
245 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
246 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
248 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
249 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
251 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
254 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
255 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
256 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
257 the file name does not look like a page range.
259 printf has several changes:
261 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
262 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
264 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
265 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
266 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
268 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
269 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
272 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
273 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
275 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
276 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
278 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
279 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
281 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
283 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
285 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
286 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
287 when first encountering the directory.
291 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
292 output; POSIX requires this.
294 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
295 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
297 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
299 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
300 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
302 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
303 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
305 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
306 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
307 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
308 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
309 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
310 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
311 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
313 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
314 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
315 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
317 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
318 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
320 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
322 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
324 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
325 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
326 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
327 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
329 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
333 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
334 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
335 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
336 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
337 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
339 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
340 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
341 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
343 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
344 is longer than PATH_MAX.
346 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
347 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
349 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
350 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
351 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
352 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
353 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
355 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
356 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
358 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
359 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
361 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
363 nocreat do not create the output file
364 excl fail if the output file already exists
365 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
366 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
368 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
370 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
371 direct use direct I/O for data
372 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
373 sync likewise, but also for metadata
374 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
375 nofollow do not follow symlinks
376 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
378 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
380 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
381 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
384 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
385 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
386 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
387 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
388 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
389 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
391 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
392 list of NUL-terminated file names.
394 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
397 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
399 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
401 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
402 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
404 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
405 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
406 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
408 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
409 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
410 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
412 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
414 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
415 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
417 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
418 for compatibility with bash.
420 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
422 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
423 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
424 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
425 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
427 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
428 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
430 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
432 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
433 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
434 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
436 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
439 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
441 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
442 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
443 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
444 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
445 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
446 an offset, not as a file name.
448 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
449 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
451 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
452 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
454 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
455 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
457 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
458 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
459 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
461 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
462 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
466 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
468 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
470 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
474 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
475 or more arguments between partitions.
477 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
478 holes in the destination.
480 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
481 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
482 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
483 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
484 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
485 terminates immediately.
487 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
489 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
491 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
492 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
493 not the empty string.
495 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
496 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
500 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
501 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
502 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
505 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
512 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
516 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
517 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
519 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
520 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
522 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
523 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
524 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
527 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
531 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
532 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
534 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
535 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
537 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
538 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
539 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
541 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
543 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
546 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
548 ** Configuration option
550 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
551 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
555 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
556 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
560 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
561 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
562 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
565 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
566 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
567 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
568 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
569 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
570 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
571 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
574 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
578 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
579 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
580 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
582 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
583 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
585 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
587 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
588 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
589 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
590 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
592 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
594 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
595 not just the ones that reference directories
597 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
598 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
600 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
601 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
602 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
604 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
605 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
606 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
607 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
608 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
609 ragged when a datum was too wide.
611 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
616 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
617 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
619 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
621 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
623 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
625 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
626 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
628 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
629 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
631 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
633 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
637 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
639 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
641 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
642 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
643 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
644 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
645 resolution is the best we can do right now.
647 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
648 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
650 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
651 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
653 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
654 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
656 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
657 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
658 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
662 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
663 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
664 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
665 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
666 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
667 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
668 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
669 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
670 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
671 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
672 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
673 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
674 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
675 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
677 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
679 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
680 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
682 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
684 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
686 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
687 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
689 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
691 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
692 without a trailing newline.
694 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
695 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
697 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
700 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
704 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
706 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
708 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
709 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
710 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
711 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
713 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
715 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
716 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
717 be printed without leading spaces.
719 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
720 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
725 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
726 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
727 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
729 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
731 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
732 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
734 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
735 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
737 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
738 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
740 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
742 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
744 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
746 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
747 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
749 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
751 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
753 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
754 byte offsets are specified.
757 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
760 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
763 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
764 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
765 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
766 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
767 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
768 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
769 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
770 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
771 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
772 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
773 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
774 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
775 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
776 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
777 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
778 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
779 directory where M has write access.
780 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
781 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
782 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
785 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
786 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
787 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
788 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
789 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
790 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
791 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
792 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
793 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
794 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
795 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
796 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
797 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
798 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
799 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
800 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
801 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
802 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
803 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
804 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
805 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
806 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
807 appeared one additional time.
809 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
810 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
811 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
812 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
815 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
816 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
817 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
818 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
819 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
820 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
821 if there were more than 338.
823 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
824 - false --help now exits nonzero
827 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
828 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
829 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
830 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
833 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
834 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
835 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
836 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
837 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
840 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
841 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
842 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
843 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
844 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
845 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
846 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
849 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
850 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
851 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
852 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
853 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
854 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
856 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
857 under certain unusual conditions
858 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
859 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
862 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
863 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
864 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
865 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
866 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
867 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
868 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
869 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
870 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
871 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
872 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
873 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
874 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
875 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
876 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
877 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
880 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
881 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
884 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
885 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
886 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
887 involving hard-linked directories
888 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
889 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
890 character-special and block files
893 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
894 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
895 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
896 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
897 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
898 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
899 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
900 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
901 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
903 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
904 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
905 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
906 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
907 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
908 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
909 specified on the command line.
910 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
911 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
912 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
913 the first file untouched.
914 * readlink: new program
915 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
916 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
917 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
918 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
919 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
920 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
923 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
924 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
925 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
926 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
927 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
928 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
929 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
930 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
931 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
932 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
933 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
934 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
936 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
937 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
938 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
940 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
941 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
942 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
943 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
944 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
945 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
946 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
947 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
950 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
951 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
954 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
955 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
956 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
957 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
958 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
959 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
960 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
963 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
964 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
966 ========================================================================
967 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
968 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
971 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
973 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
974 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
975 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
976 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
977 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
978 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
979 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
980 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
981 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
982 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
983 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
984 The old options will continue to work for a while.
986 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
987 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
988 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
989 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
991 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
994 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
996 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
997 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
998 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
999 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1000 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1001 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1002 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1005 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1006 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1007 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1008 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1009 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1010 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1011 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1012 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1013 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1014 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1015 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1016 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1017 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1018 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1019 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1020 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1022 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1023 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1025 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1026 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1027 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1028 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1029 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1030 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1032 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1033 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1034 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1035 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1036 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1037 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1038 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1040 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1041 the source files in the following example:
1042 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1043 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1044 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1045 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1046 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1047 links between source files with --preserve=links
1048 * cp accepts new options:
1049 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1050 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1051 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1052 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1053 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1054 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1055 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1056 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1057 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1059 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1060 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1061 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1062 even though it's older than dest.
1063 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1064 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1065 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1066 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1067 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1069 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1070 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1071 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1072 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1073 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1074 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1075 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1077 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1078 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1079 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1081 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1082 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1083 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1084 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1085 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1086 This is the default.
1088 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1089 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1090 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1091 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1092 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1094 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1097 ========================================================================
1098 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1099 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1102 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1103 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1105 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1106 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1107 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1108 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1109 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1111 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1112 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1113 that specifies a non-directory
1116 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1117 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1118 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1119 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1120 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1121 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1122 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1123 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1124 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1125 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1126 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1127 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1128 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1129 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1130 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1131 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1132 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1133 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1134 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1135 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1136 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1137 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1138 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1139 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1141 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1142 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1143 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1145 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1147 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1148 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1150 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1151 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1152 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1153 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1154 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1156 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1157 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1158 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1159 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1160 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1162 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1164 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1165 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1166 * still more portability fixes
1167 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1168 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1170 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1172 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1174 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1176 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1177 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1178 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1179 there is any time remaining
1180 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1182 ========================================================================
1183 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1184 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1186 This package began as the union of the following:
1187 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.