1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (2006-??-??) [unstable]
7 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
8 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
9 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
11 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
12 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
15 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
16 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
18 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
19 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
21 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
22 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
24 ** Changes in behavior
26 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
27 where the two are distinct.
29 chmod, install, and mkdir now leave a directory's set-user-ID and
30 set-group-ID bits alone unless you explicitly request otherwise.
31 This is for compatibility with BSD and other systems. For example,
32 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
33 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them. If
34 you want to clear the bits you can mention them explicitly, e.g.,
35 `chmod 0755 DIR' and `chmod a-s,u=rwx,go=rx DIR'.
37 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
38 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
39 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
41 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
42 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
43 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
44 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
47 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
48 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
50 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
51 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
52 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by chrooted
53 bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
55 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
56 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
57 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
58 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
59 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
62 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
63 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
65 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
66 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
67 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
68 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
70 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
71 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
72 successful and the output is easier to parse.
74 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
75 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
76 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
77 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
79 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
80 and sticky) with the -m option.
82 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
83 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
84 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
85 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
86 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
88 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
89 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
91 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
95 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
96 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
97 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
98 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
100 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
102 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
104 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
105 silently ignoring one of them.
107 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" when conforming
108 to POSIX 1003.1-2001, since this is a pure extension to POSIX.
109 However, "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
111 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
112 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
113 containing this change was 5.92.
115 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
116 automatically newline terminated.
118 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
119 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
120 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
121 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
124 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
125 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
126 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
129 ** Scheduled for removal
131 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
132 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
134 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
135 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
136 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
137 command to unlink a directory.
139 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
140 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
141 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
142 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
146 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
147 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
148 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
149 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
150 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
154 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
155 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
157 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
159 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
160 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
161 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
163 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
164 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
167 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
168 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
170 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
171 list directories before files.
173 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
174 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
175 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
176 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
179 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
181 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
182 list of NUL-terminated file names.
186 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
187 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
188 usually printing nothing.
190 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
192 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
193 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
194 them with hard-linked directories.
196 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
197 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
198 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
200 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
201 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
202 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
204 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
207 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
208 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
210 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
211 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
213 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
214 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
216 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
217 all command-line arguments.
219 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
221 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
223 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
224 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
226 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
228 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
229 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
230 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
231 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
232 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
234 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
235 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
237 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
238 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
239 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
240 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
242 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
244 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
248 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
249 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
251 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
252 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
254 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
255 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
257 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
258 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
260 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
261 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
263 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
265 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
266 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
267 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
270 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
272 ** Build-related bug fixes
274 installing .mo files would fail
277 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
281 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
283 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
286 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
290 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
291 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
295 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
297 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
298 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
300 ** Deprecated options
302 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
303 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
305 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
309 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
311 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
312 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
313 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
314 conforming to older POSIX versions.
316 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
319 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
325 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
330 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
332 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
334 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
335 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
336 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
338 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
339 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
340 problematic usages. These include:
342 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
343 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
344 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
345 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
346 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
347 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
348 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
349 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
350 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
352 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
353 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
355 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
356 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
357 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
358 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
360 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
361 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
362 between binary and text files.
364 The following programs now always use text input/output:
368 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
372 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
373 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
376 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
378 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
379 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
381 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
382 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
383 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
385 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
387 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
389 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
390 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
391 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
395 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
397 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
398 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
400 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
401 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
402 blocks until F contains N blocks.
406 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
407 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
411 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
412 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
413 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
417 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
418 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
422 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
424 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
426 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
430 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
431 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
432 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
434 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
435 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
436 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
437 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
438 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
440 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
444 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
445 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
446 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
448 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
450 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
451 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
452 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
453 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
455 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
457 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
458 rather than silently wrapping around.
460 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
461 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
463 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
464 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
466 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
467 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
468 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
471 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
473 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
475 ** Improved robustness
477 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
478 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
479 no matter how large the result.
481 ** Improved portability
483 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
484 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
486 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
488 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
489 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
490 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
492 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
493 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
497 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
498 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
500 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
502 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
503 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
504 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
505 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
507 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
508 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
510 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
511 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
512 categories if not specified by dircolors.
514 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
516 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
517 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
519 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
520 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
522 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
524 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
525 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
527 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
528 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
530 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
531 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
532 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
534 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
536 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
538 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
542 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
544 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
545 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
546 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
548 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
549 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
551 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
552 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
553 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
555 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
556 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
558 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
559 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
560 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
561 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
563 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
564 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
566 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
567 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
568 the file system does not support it.
570 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
572 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
573 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
575 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
577 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
578 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
580 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
581 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
582 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
583 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
585 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
586 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
589 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
590 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
591 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
592 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
594 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
595 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
596 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
597 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
599 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
600 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
602 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
604 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
605 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
606 reporting incorrect results.
610 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
611 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
613 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
616 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
618 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
619 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
621 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
622 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
624 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
627 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
628 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
629 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
630 the file name does not look like a page range.
632 printf has several changes:
634 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
635 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
637 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
638 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
639 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
641 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
642 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
645 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
646 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
648 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
649 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
651 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
653 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
654 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
656 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
658 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
660 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
661 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
662 when first encountering the directory.
666 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
667 output; POSIX requires this.
669 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
670 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
672 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
674 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
675 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
677 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
678 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
680 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
681 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
682 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
683 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
684 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
685 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
686 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
688 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
689 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
690 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
692 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
693 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
695 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
697 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
699 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
700 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
701 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
702 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
704 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
708 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
709 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
710 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
711 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
712 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
714 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
715 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
716 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
718 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
719 is longer than PATH_MAX.
721 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
722 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
724 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
725 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
726 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
727 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
728 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
730 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
731 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
733 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
734 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
736 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
738 nocreat do not create the output file
739 excl fail if the output file already exists
740 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
741 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
743 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
745 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
746 direct use direct I/O for data
747 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
748 sync likewise, but also for metadata
749 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
750 nofollow do not follow symlinks
751 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
753 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
755 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
756 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
759 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
760 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
761 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
762 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
763 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
764 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
766 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
767 list of NUL-terminated file names.
769 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
772 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
774 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
776 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
777 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
779 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
780 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
781 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
783 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
784 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
785 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
787 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
789 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
790 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
792 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
793 for compatibility with bash.
795 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
797 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
798 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
799 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
800 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
802 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
803 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
805 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
807 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
808 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
809 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
811 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
814 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
816 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
817 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
818 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
819 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
820 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
821 an offset, not as a file name.
823 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
824 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
826 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
827 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
829 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
830 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
832 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
833 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
834 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
836 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
837 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
839 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
840 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
844 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
846 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
848 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
852 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
853 or more arguments between partitions.
855 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
856 holes in the destination.
858 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
859 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
860 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
861 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
862 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
863 terminates immediately.
865 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
867 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
869 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
870 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
871 not the empty string.
873 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
874 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
878 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
879 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
880 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
883 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
890 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
894 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
895 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
897 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
898 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
900 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
901 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
902 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
905 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
909 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
910 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
912 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
913 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
915 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
916 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
917 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
919 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
921 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
924 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
926 ** Configuration option
928 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
929 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
933 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
934 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
938 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
939 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
940 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
943 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
944 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
945 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
946 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
947 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
948 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
949 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
952 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
956 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
957 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
958 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
960 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
961 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
963 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
965 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
966 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
967 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
968 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
970 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
972 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
973 not just the ones that reference directories
975 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
976 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
978 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
979 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
980 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
982 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
983 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
984 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
985 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
986 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
987 ragged when a datum was too wide.
989 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
994 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
995 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
997 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
999 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1001 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1003 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1004 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1006 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1007 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1009 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1011 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1015 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1017 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1019 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1020 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1021 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1022 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1023 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1025 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1026 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1028 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1029 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1031 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1032 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1034 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1035 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1036 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1040 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1041 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1042 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1043 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1044 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1045 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1046 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1047 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1048 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1049 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1050 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1051 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1052 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1053 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1055 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1057 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1058 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1060 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1062 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1064 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1065 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1067 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1069 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1070 without a trailing newline.
1072 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1073 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1075 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1078 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1082 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1084 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1086 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1087 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1088 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1089 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1091 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1093 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1094 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1095 be printed without leading spaces.
1097 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1098 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1103 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1104 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1105 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1107 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1109 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1110 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1112 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1113 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1115 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1116 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1118 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1120 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1122 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1124 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1125 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1127 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1129 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1131 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1132 byte offsets are specified.
1135 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1138 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1141 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1142 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1143 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1144 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1145 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1146 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1147 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1148 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1149 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1150 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1151 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1152 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1153 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1154 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1155 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1156 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1157 directory where M has write access.
1158 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1159 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1160 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1163 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1164 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1165 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1166 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1167 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1168 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1169 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1170 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1171 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1172 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1173 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1174 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1175 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1176 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1177 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1178 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1179 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1180 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1181 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1182 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1183 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1184 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1185 appeared one additional time.
1187 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1188 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1189 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1190 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1193 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1194 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1195 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1196 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1197 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1198 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1199 if there were more than 338.
1201 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1202 - false --help now exits nonzero
1205 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1206 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1207 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1208 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1211 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1212 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1213 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1214 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1215 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1218 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1219 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1220 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1221 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1222 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1223 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1224 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1227 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1228 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1229 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1230 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1231 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1232 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1234 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1235 under certain unusual conditions
1236 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1237 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1240 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1241 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1242 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1243 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1244 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1245 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1246 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1247 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1248 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1249 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1250 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1251 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1252 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1253 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1254 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1255 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1258 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1259 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1262 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1263 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1264 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1265 involving hard-linked directories
1266 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1267 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1268 character-special and block files
1271 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1272 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1273 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1274 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1275 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1276 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1277 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1278 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1279 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1281 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1282 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1283 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1284 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1285 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1286 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1287 specified on the command line.
1288 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1289 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1290 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1291 the first file untouched.
1292 * readlink: new program
1293 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1294 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1295 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1296 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1297 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1298 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1301 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1302 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1303 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1304 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1305 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1306 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1307 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1308 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1309 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1310 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1311 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1312 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1314 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1315 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1316 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1318 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1319 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1320 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1321 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1322 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1323 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1324 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1325 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1328 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1329 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1332 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1333 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1334 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1335 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1336 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1337 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1338 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1341 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1342 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1344 ========================================================================
1345 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1346 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1349 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1351 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1352 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1353 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1354 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1355 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1356 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1357 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1358 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1359 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1360 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1361 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1362 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1364 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1365 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1366 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1367 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1369 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1372 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1374 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1375 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1376 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1377 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1378 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1379 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1380 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1383 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1384 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1385 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1386 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1387 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1388 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1389 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1390 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1391 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1392 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1393 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1394 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1395 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1396 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1397 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1398 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1400 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1401 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1403 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1404 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1405 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1406 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1407 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1408 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1410 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1411 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1412 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1413 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1414 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1415 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1416 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1418 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1419 the source files in the following example:
1420 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1421 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1422 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1423 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1424 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1425 links between source files with --preserve=links
1426 * cp accepts new options:
1427 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1428 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1429 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1430 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1431 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1432 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1433 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1434 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1435 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1437 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1438 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1439 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1440 even though it's older than dest.
1441 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1442 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1443 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1444 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1445 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1447 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1448 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1449 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1450 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1451 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1452 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1453 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1455 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1456 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1457 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1459 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1460 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1461 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1462 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1463 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1464 This is the default.
1466 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1467 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1468 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1469 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1470 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1472 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1475 ========================================================================
1476 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1477 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1480 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1481 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1483 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1484 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1485 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1486 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1487 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1489 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1490 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1491 that specifies a non-directory
1494 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1495 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1496 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1497 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1498 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1499 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1500 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1501 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1502 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1503 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1504 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1505 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1506 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1507 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1508 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1509 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1510 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1511 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1512 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1513 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1514 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1515 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1516 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1517 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1519 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1520 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1521 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1523 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1525 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1526 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1528 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1529 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1530 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1531 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1532 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1534 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1535 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1536 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1537 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1538 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1540 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1542 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1543 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1544 * still more portability fixes
1545 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1546 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1548 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1550 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1552 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1554 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1555 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1556 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1557 there is any time remaining
1558 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1560 ========================================================================
1561 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1562 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1564 This package began as the union of the following:
1565 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.