1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.1 (2005-??-??) [unstable]
5 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
6 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
7 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
8 conforming to older POSIX versions.
10 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
13 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
19 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
24 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
26 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
28 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
29 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
30 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
32 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
33 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
34 problematic usages. These include:
36 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
37 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
38 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
39 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
40 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
41 tail - main.c tail main.c tail -- - main.c
42 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
43 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
44 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
46 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
47 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
48 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
49 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
51 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
53 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
55 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
56 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
57 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
61 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
63 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
64 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
66 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
67 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
68 blocks until F contains N blocks.
72 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
73 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
77 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
78 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
79 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
83 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
85 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
87 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
91 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
92 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
93 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
95 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
96 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
97 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
98 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
99 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
101 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
105 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
106 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
107 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
109 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
110 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
111 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
112 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
114 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
116 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
117 rather than silently wrapping around.
119 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
120 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
122 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
123 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
125 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
126 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
127 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
130 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
132 ** Improved portability
134 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
135 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
137 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
139 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
140 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
141 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
143 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
144 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
148 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
149 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
151 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
153 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
154 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
156 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
158 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
159 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
161 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
162 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
164 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now closes it and then reopens it with an
165 unreadable file descriptor. (This step is skipped if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.)
166 This prevents the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
168 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
169 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
170 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
172 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
176 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
178 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
179 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
180 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
182 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
183 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
185 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
186 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
187 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
189 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
190 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
192 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
193 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
194 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
195 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
197 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
198 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
200 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
201 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
202 the file system does not support it.
204 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
206 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
207 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
209 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
211 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
212 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
214 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
215 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
216 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
217 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
219 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
220 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
223 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
224 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
225 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
226 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
228 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
229 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
230 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
231 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
233 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
234 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
236 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
238 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
239 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
240 reporting incorrect results.
244 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
245 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
247 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
248 value happens to be -1.
250 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
252 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
253 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
255 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
256 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
258 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
261 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
262 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
263 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
264 the file name does not look like a page range.
266 printf has several changes:
268 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
269 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
271 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
272 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
273 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
275 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
276 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
279 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
280 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
282 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
283 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
285 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
286 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
288 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
290 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
292 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
293 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
294 when first encountering the directory.
298 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
299 output; POSIX requires this.
301 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
302 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
304 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
306 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
307 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
309 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
310 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
312 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
313 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
314 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
315 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
316 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
317 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
318 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
320 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
321 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
322 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
324 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
325 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
327 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
329 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
331 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
332 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
333 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
334 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
336 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
340 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
341 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
342 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
343 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
344 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
346 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
347 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
348 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
350 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
351 is longer than PATH_MAX.
353 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
354 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
356 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
357 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
358 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
359 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
360 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
362 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
363 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
365 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
366 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
368 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
370 nocreat do not create the output file
371 excl fail if the output file already exists
372 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
373 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
375 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
377 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
378 direct use direct I/O for data
379 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
380 sync likewise, but also for metadata
381 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
382 nofollow do not follow symlinks
383 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
385 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
387 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
388 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
391 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
392 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
393 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
394 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
395 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
396 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
398 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
399 list of NUL-terminated file names.
401 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
404 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
406 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
408 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
409 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
411 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
412 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
413 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
415 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
416 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
417 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
419 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
421 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
422 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
424 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
425 for compatibility with bash.
427 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
429 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
430 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
431 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
432 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
434 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
435 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
437 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
439 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
440 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
441 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
443 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
446 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
448 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
449 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
450 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
451 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
452 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
453 an offset, not as a file name.
455 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
456 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
458 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
459 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
461 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
462 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
464 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
465 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
466 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
468 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
469 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
473 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
475 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
477 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
481 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
482 or more arguments between partitions.
484 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
485 holes in the destination.
487 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
488 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
489 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
490 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
491 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
492 terminates immediately.
494 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
496 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
498 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
499 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
500 not the empty string.
502 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
503 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
507 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
508 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
509 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
512 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
519 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
523 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
524 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
526 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
527 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
529 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
530 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
531 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
534 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
538 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
539 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
541 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
542 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
544 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
545 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
546 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
548 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
550 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
553 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
555 ** Configuration option
557 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
558 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
562 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
563 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
567 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
568 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
569 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
572 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
573 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
574 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
575 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
576 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
577 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
578 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
581 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
585 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
586 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
587 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
589 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
590 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
592 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
594 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
595 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
596 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
597 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
599 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
601 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
602 not just the ones that reference directories
604 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
605 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
607 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
608 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
609 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
611 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
612 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
613 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
614 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
615 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
616 ragged when a datum was too wide.
618 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
623 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
624 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
626 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
628 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
630 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
632 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
633 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
635 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
636 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
638 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
640 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
644 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
646 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
648 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
649 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
650 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
651 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
652 resolution is the best we can do right now.
654 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
655 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
657 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
658 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
660 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
661 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
663 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
664 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
665 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
669 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
670 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
671 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
672 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
673 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
674 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
675 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
676 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
677 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
678 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
679 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
680 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
681 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
682 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
684 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
686 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
687 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
689 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
691 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
693 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
694 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
696 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
698 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
699 without a trailing newline.
701 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
702 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
704 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
707 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
711 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
713 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
715 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
716 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
717 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
718 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
720 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
722 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
723 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
724 be printed without leading spaces.
726 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
727 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
732 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
733 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
734 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
736 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
738 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
739 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
741 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
742 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
744 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
745 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
747 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
749 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
751 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
753 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
754 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
756 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
758 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
760 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
761 byte offsets are specified.
764 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
767 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
770 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
771 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
772 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
773 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
774 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
775 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
776 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
777 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
778 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
779 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
780 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
781 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
782 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
783 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
784 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
785 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
786 directory where M has write access.
787 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
788 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
789 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
792 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
793 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
794 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
795 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
796 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
797 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
798 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
799 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
800 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
801 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
802 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
803 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
804 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
805 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
806 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
807 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
808 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
809 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
810 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
811 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
812 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
813 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
814 appeared one additional time.
816 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
817 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
818 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
819 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
822 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
823 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
824 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
825 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
826 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
827 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
828 if there were more than 338.
830 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
831 - false --help now exits nonzero
834 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
835 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
836 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
837 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
840 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
841 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
842 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
843 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
844 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
847 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
848 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
849 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
850 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
851 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
852 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
853 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
856 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
857 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
858 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
859 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
860 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
861 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
863 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
864 under certain unusual conditions
865 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
866 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
869 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
870 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
871 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
872 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
873 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
874 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
875 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
876 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
877 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
878 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
879 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
880 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
881 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
882 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
883 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
884 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
887 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
888 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
891 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
892 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
893 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
894 involving hard-linked directories
895 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
896 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
897 character-special and block files
900 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
901 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
902 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
903 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
904 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
905 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
906 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
907 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
908 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
910 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
911 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
912 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
913 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
914 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
915 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
916 specified on the command line.
917 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
918 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
919 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
920 the first file untouched.
921 * readlink: new program
922 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
923 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
924 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
925 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
926 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
927 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
930 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
931 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
932 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
933 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
934 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
935 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
936 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
937 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
938 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
939 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
940 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
941 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
943 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
944 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
945 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
947 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
948 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
949 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
950 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
951 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
952 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
953 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
954 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
957 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
958 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
961 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
962 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
963 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
964 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
965 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
966 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
967 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
970 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
971 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
973 ========================================================================
974 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
975 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
978 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
980 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
981 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
982 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
983 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
984 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
985 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
986 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
987 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
988 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
989 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
990 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
991 The old options will continue to work for a while.
993 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
994 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
995 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
996 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
998 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1001 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1003 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1004 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1005 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1006 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1007 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1008 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1009 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1012 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1013 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1014 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1015 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1016 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1017 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1018 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1019 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1020 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1021 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1022 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1023 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1024 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1025 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1026 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1027 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1029 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1030 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1032 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1033 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1034 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1035 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1036 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1037 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1039 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1040 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1041 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1042 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1043 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1044 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1045 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1047 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1048 the source files in the following example:
1049 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1050 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1051 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1052 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1053 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1054 links between source files with --preserve=links
1055 * cp accepts new options:
1056 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1057 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1058 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1059 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1060 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1061 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1062 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1063 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1064 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1066 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1067 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1068 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1069 even though it's older than dest.
1070 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1071 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1072 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1073 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1074 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1076 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1077 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1078 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1079 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1080 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1081 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1082 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1084 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1085 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1086 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1088 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1089 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1090 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1091 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1092 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1093 This is the default.
1095 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1096 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1097 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1098 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1099 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1101 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1104 ========================================================================
1105 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1106 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1109 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1110 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1112 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1113 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1114 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1115 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1116 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1118 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1119 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1120 that specifies a non-directory
1123 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1124 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1125 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1126 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1127 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1128 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1129 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1130 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1131 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1132 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1133 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1134 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1135 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1136 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1137 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1138 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1139 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1140 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1141 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1142 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1143 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1144 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1145 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1146 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1148 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1149 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1150 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1152 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1154 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1155 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1157 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1158 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1159 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1160 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1161 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1163 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1164 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1165 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1166 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1167 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1169 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1171 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1172 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1173 * still more portability fixes
1174 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1175 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1177 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1179 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1181 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1183 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1184 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1185 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1186 there is any time remaining
1187 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1189 ========================================================================
1190 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1191 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1193 This package began as the union of the following:
1194 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.