1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 ** Programs no longer installed by default
14 ** Changes in behavior
16 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
17 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
19 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
20 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
21 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
25 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
27 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
28 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
29 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
31 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
32 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
33 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
38 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
39 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
40 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
41 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
43 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
44 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
45 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
46 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
47 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
48 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
51 ** Remove deprecated options
53 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
54 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
55 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
56 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
57 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
59 ** Improved robustness
61 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
62 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
63 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
64 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
65 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
66 loss of the contents of a/f.
68 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
69 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
73 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
74 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
75 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
77 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
78 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
79 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
80 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
82 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
83 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
84 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
85 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
86 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
87 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
88 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
89 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
90 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
91 the destination is a symlink.
93 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
95 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
96 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
98 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
99 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
101 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
103 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
104 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
106 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
109 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
110 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
112 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
113 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
115 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
116 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
117 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
118 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
120 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
121 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
122 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
124 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
125 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
126 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
128 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
129 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
130 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
131 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
133 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
134 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
136 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
137 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
138 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
140 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
141 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
143 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
144 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
146 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
147 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
150 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
154 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
156 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
157 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
158 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
160 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
161 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
163 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
167 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
168 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
170 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
171 support but with insufficient /proc support.
173 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
174 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
176 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
177 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
178 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
179 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
180 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
181 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
183 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
184 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
187 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
188 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
190 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
193 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
194 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
195 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
197 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
198 directory is unreadable.
200 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
201 Before it would print nothing.
203 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
207 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
208 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
209 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
211 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
212 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
213 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
214 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
217 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
221 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
222 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
223 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
224 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
225 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
226 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
227 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
229 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
230 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
231 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
232 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
233 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
234 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
235 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
236 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
238 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
239 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
240 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
243 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
247 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
248 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
250 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
251 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
252 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
254 ** Improved robustness
256 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
257 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
258 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
261 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
265 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
266 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
267 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
268 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
269 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
271 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
275 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
278 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
282 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
283 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
284 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
285 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
287 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
288 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
290 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
291 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
292 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
295 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
297 ** Improved robustness
299 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
300 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
302 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
303 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
304 or NFS-mounted partition.
306 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
307 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
311 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
312 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
313 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
314 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
315 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
316 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
318 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
319 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
321 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
322 or neglect to report file removal.
324 For the "groups" command:
326 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
327 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
329 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
331 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
333 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
337 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
338 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
341 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
343 ** Changes in behavior
345 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
346 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
347 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
348 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
350 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
351 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
352 a final `./' or `../' component.
354 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
355 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
358 ** Infrastructure changes
360 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
361 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
362 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
363 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
367 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
370 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
371 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
372 dirent.d_type support.
374 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
375 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
377 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
378 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
379 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
380 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
383 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
385 ** Changes in behavior
387 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
391 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
392 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
396 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
397 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
398 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
400 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
401 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
403 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
404 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
406 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
408 ** Improved robustness
410 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
411 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
412 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
414 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
415 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
418 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
419 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
421 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
422 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
424 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
425 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
427 ** Changes in behavior
429 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
430 where the two are distinct.
432 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
433 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
434 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
435 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
436 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
437 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
438 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
439 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
440 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
441 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
442 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
443 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
444 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
445 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
446 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
447 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
448 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
450 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
451 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
452 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
454 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
455 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
456 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
457 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
460 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
461 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
465 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
466 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
467 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
468 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
470 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
471 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
472 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
474 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
475 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
476 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
477 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
478 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
481 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
482 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
484 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
485 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
486 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
487 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
489 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
490 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
491 successful and the output is easier to parse.
493 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
494 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
495 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
496 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
498 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
499 and sticky) with the -m option.
501 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
502 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
503 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
504 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
505 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
507 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
508 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
510 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
514 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
515 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
516 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
517 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
519 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
521 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
523 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
524 silently ignoring one of them.
526 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
527 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
528 containing this change was 5.92.
530 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
531 automatically newline terminated.
533 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
534 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
535 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
536 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
539 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
540 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
541 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
544 ** Scheduled for removal
546 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
547 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
549 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
550 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
551 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
552 command to unlink a directory.
554 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
555 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
556 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
557 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
561 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
562 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
563 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
564 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
565 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
566 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
570 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
571 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
573 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
575 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
576 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
577 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
579 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
580 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
583 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
584 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
586 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
587 list directories before files.
589 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
590 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
591 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
592 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
595 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
597 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
599 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
600 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
601 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
603 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
604 list of NUL-terminated file names.
608 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
609 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
610 usually printing nothing.
612 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
614 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
615 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
616 them with hard-linked directories.
618 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
619 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
620 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
622 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
623 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
624 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
626 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
629 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
630 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
632 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
633 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
635 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
636 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
638 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
639 all command-line arguments.
641 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
643 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
645 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
646 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
648 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
650 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
651 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
652 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
653 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
654 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
656 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
657 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
659 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
660 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
661 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
662 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
664 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
666 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
670 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
671 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
673 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
674 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
676 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
677 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
679 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
680 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
682 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
683 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
685 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
687 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
688 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
689 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
692 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
694 ** Build-related bug fixes
696 installing .mo files would fail
699 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
703 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
705 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
708 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
712 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
713 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
717 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
719 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
720 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
722 ** Deprecated options
724 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
725 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
727 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
731 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
733 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
734 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
735 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
736 conforming to older POSIX versions.
738 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
741 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
747 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
752 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
754 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
756 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
757 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
758 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
760 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
761 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
762 problematic usages. These include:
764 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
765 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
766 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
767 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
768 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
769 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
770 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
771 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
772 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
774 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
775 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
777 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
778 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
779 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
780 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
782 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
783 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
784 between binary and text files.
786 The following programs now always use text input/output:
790 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
794 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
795 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
798 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
800 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
801 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
803 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
804 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
805 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
807 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
809 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
811 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
812 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
813 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
817 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
819 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
820 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
822 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
823 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
824 blocks until F contains N blocks.
828 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
829 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
833 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
834 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
835 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
839 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
840 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
844 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
846 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
848 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
852 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
853 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
854 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
856 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
857 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
858 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
859 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
860 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
862 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
866 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
867 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
868 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
870 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
872 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
873 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
874 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
875 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
877 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
879 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
880 rather than silently wrapping around.
882 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
883 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
885 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
886 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
888 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
889 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
890 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
893 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
895 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
897 ** Improved robustness
899 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
900 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
901 no matter how large the result.
903 ** Improved portability
905 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
906 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
908 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
910 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
911 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
912 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
914 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
915 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
919 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
920 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
922 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
924 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
925 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
926 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
927 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
929 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
930 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
932 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
933 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
934 categories if not specified by dircolors.
936 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
938 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
939 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
941 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
942 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
944 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
946 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
947 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
949 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
950 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
952 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
953 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
954 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
956 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
958 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
960 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
964 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
966 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
967 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
968 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
970 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
971 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
973 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
974 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
975 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
977 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
978 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
980 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
981 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
982 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
983 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
985 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
986 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
988 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
989 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
990 the file system does not support it.
992 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
994 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
995 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
997 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
999 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1000 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1002 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1003 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1004 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1005 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1007 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1008 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1011 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1012 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1013 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1014 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1016 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1017 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1018 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1019 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1021 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1022 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1024 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1026 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1027 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1028 reporting incorrect results.
1032 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1033 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1035 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1038 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1040 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1041 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1043 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1044 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1046 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1049 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1050 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1051 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1052 the file name does not look like a page range.
1054 printf has several changes:
1056 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1057 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1059 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1060 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1061 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1063 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1064 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1067 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1068 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1070 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1071 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1073 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1075 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1076 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1078 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1080 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1082 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1083 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1084 when first encountering the directory.
1088 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1089 output; POSIX requires this.
1091 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1092 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1094 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1096 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1097 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1099 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1100 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1102 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1103 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1104 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1105 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1106 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1107 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1108 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1110 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1111 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1112 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1114 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1115 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1117 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1119 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1121 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1122 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1123 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1124 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1126 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1130 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1131 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1132 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1133 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1134 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1136 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1137 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1138 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1140 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1141 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1143 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1144 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1146 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1147 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1148 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1149 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1150 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1152 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1153 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1155 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1156 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1158 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1160 nocreat do not create the output file
1161 excl fail if the output file already exists
1162 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1163 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1165 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1167 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1168 direct use direct I/O for data
1169 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1170 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1171 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1172 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1173 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1175 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1177 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1178 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1181 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1182 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1183 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1184 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1185 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1186 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1188 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1189 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1191 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1194 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1196 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1198 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1199 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1201 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1202 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1203 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1205 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1206 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1207 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1209 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1211 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1212 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1214 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1215 for compatibility with bash.
1217 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1219 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1220 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1221 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1222 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1224 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1225 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1227 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1228 ls supports TABSIZE.
1229 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1230 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1231 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1233 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1236 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1238 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1239 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1240 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1241 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1242 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1243 an offset, not as a file name.
1245 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1246 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1248 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1249 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1251 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1252 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1254 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1255 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1256 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1258 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1259 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1261 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1262 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1266 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1268 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1270 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1274 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1275 or more arguments between partitions.
1277 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1278 holes in the destination.
1280 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1281 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1282 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1283 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1284 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1285 terminates immediately.
1287 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1289 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1291 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1292 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1293 not the empty string.
1295 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1296 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1300 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1301 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1302 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1305 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1312 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1316 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1317 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1319 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1320 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1322 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1323 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1324 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1327 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1331 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1332 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1334 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1335 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1337 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1338 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1339 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1341 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1343 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1346 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1348 ** Configuration option
1350 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1351 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1355 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1356 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1360 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1361 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1362 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1365 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1366 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1367 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1368 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1369 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1370 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1371 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1374 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1378 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1379 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1380 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1382 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1383 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1385 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1387 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1388 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1389 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1390 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1392 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1394 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1395 not just the ones that reference directories
1397 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1398 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1400 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1401 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1402 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1404 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1405 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1406 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1407 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1408 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1409 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1411 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1416 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1417 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1419 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1421 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1423 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1425 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1426 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1428 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1429 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1431 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1433 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1437 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1439 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1441 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1442 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1443 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1444 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1445 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1447 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1448 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1450 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1451 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1453 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1454 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1456 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1457 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1458 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1462 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1463 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1464 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1465 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1466 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1467 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1468 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1469 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1470 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1471 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1472 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1473 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1474 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1475 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1477 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1479 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1480 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1482 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1484 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1486 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1487 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1489 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1491 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1492 without a trailing newline.
1494 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1495 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1497 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1500 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1504 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1506 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1508 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1509 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1510 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1511 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1513 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1515 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1516 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1517 be printed without leading spaces.
1519 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1520 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1525 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1526 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1527 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1529 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1531 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1532 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1534 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1535 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1537 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1538 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1540 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1542 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1544 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1546 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1547 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1549 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1551 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1553 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1554 byte offsets are specified.
1557 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1560 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1563 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1564 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1565 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1566 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1567 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1568 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1569 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1570 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1571 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1572 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1573 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1574 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1575 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1576 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1577 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1578 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1579 directory where M has write access.
1580 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1581 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1582 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1585 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1586 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1587 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1588 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1589 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1590 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1591 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1592 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1593 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1594 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1595 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1596 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1597 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1598 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1599 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1600 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1601 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1602 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1603 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1604 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1605 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1606 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1607 appeared one additional time.
1609 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1610 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1611 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1612 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1615 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1616 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1617 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1618 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1619 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1620 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1621 if there were more than 338.
1623 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1624 - false --help now exits nonzero
1627 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1628 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1629 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1630 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1633 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1634 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1635 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1636 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1637 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1640 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1641 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1642 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1643 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1644 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1645 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1646 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1649 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1650 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1651 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1652 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1653 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1654 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1656 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1657 under certain unusual conditions
1658 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1659 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1662 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1663 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1664 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1665 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1666 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1667 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1668 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1669 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1670 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1671 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1672 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1673 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1674 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1675 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1676 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1677 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1680 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1681 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1684 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1685 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1686 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1687 involving hard-linked directories
1688 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1689 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1690 character-special and block files
1693 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1694 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1695 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1696 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1697 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1698 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1699 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1700 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1701 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1703 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1704 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1705 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1706 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1707 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1708 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1709 specified on the command line.
1710 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1711 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1712 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1713 the first file untouched.
1714 * readlink: new program
1715 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1716 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1717 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1718 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1719 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1720 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1723 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1724 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1725 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1726 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1727 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1728 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1729 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1730 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1731 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1732 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1733 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1734 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1736 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1737 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1738 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1740 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1741 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1742 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1743 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1744 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1745 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1746 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1747 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1750 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1751 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1754 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1755 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1756 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1757 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1758 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1759 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1760 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1763 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1764 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1766 ========================================================================
1767 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1768 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1771 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1773 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1774 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1775 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1776 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1777 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1778 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1779 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1780 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1781 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1782 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1783 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1784 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1786 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1787 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1788 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1789 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1791 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1794 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1796 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1797 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1798 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1799 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1800 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1801 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1802 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1805 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1806 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1807 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1808 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1809 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1810 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1811 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1812 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1813 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1814 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1815 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1816 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1817 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1818 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1819 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1820 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1822 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1823 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1825 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1826 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1827 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1828 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1829 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1830 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1832 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1833 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1834 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1835 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1836 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1837 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1838 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1840 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1841 the source files in the following example:
1842 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1843 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1844 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1845 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1846 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1847 links between source files with --preserve=links
1848 * cp accepts new options:
1849 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1850 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1851 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1852 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1853 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1854 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1855 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1856 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1857 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1859 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1860 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1861 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1862 even though it's older than dest.
1863 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1864 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1865 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1866 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1867 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1869 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1870 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1871 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1872 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1873 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1874 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1875 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1877 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1878 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1879 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1881 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1882 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1883 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1884 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1885 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1886 This is the default.
1888 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1889 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1890 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1891 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1892 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1894 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1897 ========================================================================
1898 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1899 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1902 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1903 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1905 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1906 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1907 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1908 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1909 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1911 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1912 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1913 that specifies a non-directory
1916 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1917 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1918 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1919 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1920 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1921 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1922 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1923 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1924 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1925 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1926 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1927 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1928 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1929 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1930 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1931 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1932 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1933 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1934 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1935 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1936 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1937 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1938 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1939 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1941 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1942 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1943 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1945 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1947 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1948 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1950 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1951 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1952 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1953 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1954 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1956 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1957 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1958 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1959 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1960 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1962 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1964 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1965 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1966 * still more portability fixes
1967 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1968 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1970 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1972 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1974 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1976 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1977 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1978 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1979 there is any time remaining
1980 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1982 ========================================================================
1983 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1984 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1986 This package began as the union of the following:
1987 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1989 ========================================================================
1991 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1994 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1995 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1996 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1997 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1998 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1999 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.