1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.1-cvs (2006-??-??) [unstable]
7 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
8 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
11 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
13 ** Improved robustness
15 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
16 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
17 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
19 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
20 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
23 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
24 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
26 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
27 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
29 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
30 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
32 ** Changes in behavior
34 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
35 where the two are distinct.
37 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
38 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
39 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
40 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
41 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
42 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
43 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
44 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
45 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
46 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
47 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
48 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
49 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
50 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
51 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
52 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
53 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
55 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
56 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
57 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
59 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
60 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
61 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
62 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
65 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
66 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
70 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
71 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
72 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
73 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
75 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
76 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
77 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
79 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
80 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
81 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
82 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
83 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
86 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
87 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
89 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
90 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
91 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
92 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
94 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
95 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
96 successful and the output is easier to parse.
98 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
99 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
100 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
101 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
103 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
104 and sticky) with the -m option.
106 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
107 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
108 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
109 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
110 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
112 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
113 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
115 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
119 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
120 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
121 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
122 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
124 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
126 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
128 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
129 silently ignoring one of them.
131 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
132 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
133 containing this change was 5.92.
135 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
136 automatically newline terminated.
138 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
139 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
140 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
141 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
144 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
145 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
146 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
149 ** Scheduled for removal
151 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
152 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
154 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
155 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
156 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
157 command to unlink a directory.
159 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
160 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
161 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
162 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
166 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
167 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
168 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
169 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
170 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
171 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
175 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
176 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
178 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
180 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
181 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
182 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
184 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
185 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
188 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
189 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
191 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
192 list directories before files.
194 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
195 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
196 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
197 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
200 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
202 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
204 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
205 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
206 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
208 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
209 list of NUL-terminated file names.
213 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
214 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
215 usually printing nothing.
217 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
219 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
220 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
221 them with hard-linked directories.
223 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
224 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
225 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
227 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
228 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
229 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
231 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
234 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
235 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
237 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
238 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
240 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
241 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
243 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
244 all command-line arguments.
246 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
248 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
250 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
251 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
253 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
255 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
256 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
257 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
258 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
259 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
261 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
262 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
264 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
265 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
266 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
267 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
269 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
271 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
275 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
276 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
278 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
279 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
281 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
282 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
284 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
285 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
287 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
288 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
290 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
292 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
293 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
294 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
297 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
299 ** Build-related bug fixes
301 installing .mo files would fail
304 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
308 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
310 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
313 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
317 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
318 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
322 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
324 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
325 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
327 ** Deprecated options
329 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
330 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
332 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
336 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
338 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
339 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
340 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
341 conforming to older POSIX versions.
343 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
346 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
352 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
357 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
359 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
361 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
362 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
363 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
365 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
366 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
367 problematic usages. These include:
369 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
370 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
371 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
372 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
373 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
374 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
375 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
376 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
377 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
379 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
380 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
382 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
383 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
384 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
385 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
387 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
388 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
389 between binary and text files.
391 The following programs now always use text input/output:
395 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
399 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
400 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
403 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
405 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
406 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
408 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
409 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
410 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
412 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
414 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
416 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
417 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
418 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
422 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
424 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
425 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
427 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
428 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
429 blocks until F contains N blocks.
433 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
434 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
438 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
439 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
440 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
444 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
445 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
449 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
451 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
453 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
457 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
458 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
459 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
461 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
462 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
463 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
464 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
465 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
467 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
471 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
472 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
473 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
475 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
477 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
478 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
479 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
480 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
482 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
484 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
485 rather than silently wrapping around.
487 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
488 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
490 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
491 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
493 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
494 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
495 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
498 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
500 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
502 ** Improved robustness
504 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
505 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
506 no matter how large the result.
508 ** Improved portability
510 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
511 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
513 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
515 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
516 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
517 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
519 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
520 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
524 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
525 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
527 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
529 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
530 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
531 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
532 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
534 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
535 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
537 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
538 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
539 categories if not specified by dircolors.
541 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
543 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
544 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
546 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
547 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
549 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
551 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
552 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
554 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
555 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
557 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
558 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
559 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
561 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
563 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
565 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
569 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
571 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
572 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
573 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
575 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
576 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
578 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
579 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
580 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
582 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
583 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
585 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
586 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
587 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
588 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
590 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
591 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
593 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
594 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
595 the file system does not support it.
597 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
599 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
600 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
602 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
604 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
605 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
607 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
608 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
609 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
610 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
612 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
613 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
616 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
617 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
618 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
619 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
621 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
622 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
623 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
624 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
626 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
627 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
629 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
631 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
632 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
633 reporting incorrect results.
637 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
638 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
640 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
643 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
645 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
646 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
648 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
649 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
651 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
654 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
655 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
656 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
657 the file name does not look like a page range.
659 printf has several changes:
661 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
662 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
664 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
665 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
666 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
668 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
669 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
672 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
673 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
675 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
676 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
678 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
680 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
681 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
683 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
685 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
687 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
688 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
689 when first encountering the directory.
693 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
694 output; POSIX requires this.
696 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
697 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
699 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
701 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
702 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
704 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
705 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
707 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
708 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
709 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
710 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
711 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
712 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
713 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
715 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
716 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
717 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
719 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
720 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
722 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
724 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
726 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
727 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
728 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
729 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
731 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
735 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
736 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
737 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
738 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
739 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
741 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
742 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
743 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
745 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
746 is longer than PATH_MAX.
748 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
749 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
751 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
752 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
753 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
754 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
755 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
757 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
758 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
760 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
761 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
763 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
765 nocreat do not create the output file
766 excl fail if the output file already exists
767 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
768 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
770 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
772 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
773 direct use direct I/O for data
774 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
775 sync likewise, but also for metadata
776 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
777 nofollow do not follow symlinks
778 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
780 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
782 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
783 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
786 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
787 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
788 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
789 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
790 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
791 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
793 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
794 list of NUL-terminated file names.
796 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
799 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
801 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
803 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
804 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
806 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
807 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
808 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
810 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
811 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
812 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
814 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
816 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
817 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
819 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
820 for compatibility with bash.
822 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
824 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
825 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
826 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
827 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
829 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
830 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
832 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
834 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
835 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
836 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
838 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
841 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
843 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
844 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
845 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
846 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
847 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
848 an offset, not as a file name.
850 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
851 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
853 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
854 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
856 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
857 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
859 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
860 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
861 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
863 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
864 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
866 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
867 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
871 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
873 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
875 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
879 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
880 or more arguments between partitions.
882 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
883 holes in the destination.
885 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
886 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
887 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
888 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
889 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
890 terminates immediately.
892 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
894 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
896 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
897 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
898 not the empty string.
900 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
901 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
905 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
906 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
907 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
910 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
917 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
921 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
922 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
924 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
925 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
927 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
928 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
929 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
932 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
936 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
937 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
939 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
940 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
942 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
943 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
944 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
946 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
948 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
951 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
953 ** Configuration option
955 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
956 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
960 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
961 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
965 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
966 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
967 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
970 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
971 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
972 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
973 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
974 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
975 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
976 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
979 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
983 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
984 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
985 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
987 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
988 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
990 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
992 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
993 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
994 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
995 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
997 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
999 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1000 not just the ones that reference directories
1002 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1003 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1005 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1006 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1007 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1009 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1010 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1011 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1012 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1013 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1014 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1016 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1021 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1022 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1024 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1026 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1028 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1030 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1031 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1033 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1034 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1036 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1038 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1042 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1044 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1046 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1047 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1048 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1049 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1050 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1052 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1053 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1055 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1056 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1058 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1059 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1061 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1062 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1063 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1067 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1068 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1069 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1070 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1071 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1072 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1073 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1074 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1075 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1076 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1077 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1078 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1079 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1080 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1082 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1084 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1085 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1087 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1089 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1091 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1092 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1094 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1096 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1097 without a trailing newline.
1099 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1100 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1102 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1105 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1109 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1111 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1113 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1114 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1115 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1116 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1118 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1120 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1121 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1122 be printed without leading spaces.
1124 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1125 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1130 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1131 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1132 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1134 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1136 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1137 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1139 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1140 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1142 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1143 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1145 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1147 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1149 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1151 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1152 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1154 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1156 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1158 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1159 byte offsets are specified.
1162 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1165 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1168 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1169 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1170 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1171 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1172 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1173 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1174 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1175 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1176 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1177 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1178 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1179 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1180 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1181 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1182 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1183 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1184 directory where M has write access.
1185 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1186 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1187 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1190 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1191 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1192 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1193 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1194 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1195 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1196 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1197 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1198 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1199 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1200 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1201 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1202 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1203 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1204 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1205 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1206 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1207 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1208 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1209 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1210 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1211 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1212 appeared one additional time.
1214 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1215 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1216 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1217 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1220 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1221 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1222 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1223 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1224 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1225 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1226 if there were more than 338.
1228 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1229 - false --help now exits nonzero
1232 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1233 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1234 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1235 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1238 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1239 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1240 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1241 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1242 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1245 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1246 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1247 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1248 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1249 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1250 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1251 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1254 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1255 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1256 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1257 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1258 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1259 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1261 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1262 under certain unusual conditions
1263 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1264 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1267 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1268 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1269 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1270 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1271 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1272 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1273 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1274 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1275 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1276 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1277 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1278 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1279 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1280 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1281 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1282 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1285 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1286 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1289 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1290 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1291 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1292 involving hard-linked directories
1293 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1294 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1295 character-special and block files
1298 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1299 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1300 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1301 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1302 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1303 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1304 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1305 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1306 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1308 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1309 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1310 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1311 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1312 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1313 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1314 specified on the command line.
1315 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1316 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1317 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1318 the first file untouched.
1319 * readlink: new program
1320 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1321 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1322 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1323 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1324 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1325 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1328 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1329 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1330 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1331 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1332 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1333 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1334 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1335 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1336 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1337 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1338 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1339 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1341 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1342 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1343 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1345 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1346 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1347 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1348 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1349 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1350 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1351 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1352 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1355 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1356 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1359 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1360 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1361 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1362 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1363 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1364 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1365 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1368 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1369 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1371 ========================================================================
1372 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1373 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1376 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1378 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1379 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1380 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1381 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1382 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1383 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1384 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1385 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1386 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1387 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1388 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1389 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1391 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1392 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1393 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1394 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1396 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1399 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1401 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1402 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1403 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1404 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1405 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1406 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1407 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1410 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1411 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1412 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1413 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1414 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1415 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1416 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1417 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1418 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1419 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1420 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1421 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1422 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1423 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1424 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1425 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1427 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1428 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1430 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1431 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1432 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1433 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1434 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1435 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1437 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1438 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1439 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1440 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1441 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1442 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1443 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1445 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1446 the source files in the following example:
1447 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1448 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1449 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1450 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1451 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1452 links between source files with --preserve=links
1453 * cp accepts new options:
1454 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1455 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1456 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1457 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1458 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1459 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1460 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1461 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1462 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1464 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1465 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1466 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1467 even though it's older than dest.
1468 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1469 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1470 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1471 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1472 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1474 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1475 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1476 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1477 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1478 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1479 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1480 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1482 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1483 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1484 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1486 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1487 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1488 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1489 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1490 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1491 This is the default.
1493 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1494 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1495 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1496 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1497 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1499 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1502 ========================================================================
1503 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1504 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1507 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1508 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1510 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1511 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1512 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1513 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1514 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1516 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1517 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1518 that specifies a non-directory
1521 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1522 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1523 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1524 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1525 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1526 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1527 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1528 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1529 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1530 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1531 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1532 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1533 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1534 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1535 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1536 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1537 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1538 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1539 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1540 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1541 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1542 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1543 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1544 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1546 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1547 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1548 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1550 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1552 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1553 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1555 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1556 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1557 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1558 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1559 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1561 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1562 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1563 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1564 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1565 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1567 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1569 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1570 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1571 * still more portability fixes
1572 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1573 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1575 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1577 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1579 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1581 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1582 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1583 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1584 there is any time remaining
1585 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1587 ========================================================================
1588 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1589 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1591 This package began as the union of the following:
1592 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.