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 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
12 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
14 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
15 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
17 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
18 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
20 ** Changes in behavior
22 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
23 where the two are distinct.
25 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
26 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
27 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
29 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
30 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
31 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
32 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
35 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
36 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
38 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
39 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
40 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by chrooted
41 bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
43 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
44 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
45 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
46 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
47 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
50 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
51 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
52 successful and the output is easier to parse.
54 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
55 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
56 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
57 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
59 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
60 and sticky) with the -m option.
62 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
63 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
64 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
65 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
66 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
68 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
69 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
71 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
72 silently ignoring one of them.
74 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
75 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
76 containing this change was 5.92.
78 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
79 automatically newline terminated.
81 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
82 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
83 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
84 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
87 ** Scheduled for removal
89 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
90 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
92 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
93 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
94 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
95 command to unlink a directory.
97 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
98 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
99 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
100 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
104 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
105 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
106 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
107 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
108 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
112 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
113 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
115 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
117 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
118 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
119 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
121 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
122 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
125 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
126 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
128 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
129 list directories before files.
131 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
132 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
133 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
134 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
137 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
141 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
143 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
144 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
145 them with hard-linked directories.
147 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
148 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
149 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
151 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
152 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
153 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
155 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
156 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
158 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally
160 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
161 all command-line arguments.
163 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
165 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
167 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
168 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
170 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
172 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
173 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
174 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
175 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
176 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
178 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
179 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
181 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
183 [see branch for details]
185 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
189 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
190 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
192 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
193 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
195 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
196 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
198 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
199 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
201 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
202 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
204 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
206 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
207 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
208 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
211 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
213 ** Build-related bug fixes
215 installing .mo files would fail
218 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
222 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
224 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
227 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
231 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
232 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
236 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
238 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
239 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
241 ** Deprecated options
243 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
244 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
246 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
250 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
252 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
253 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
254 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
255 conforming to older POSIX versions.
257 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
260 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
266 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
271 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
273 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
275 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
276 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
277 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
279 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
280 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
281 problematic usages. These include:
283 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
284 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
285 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
286 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
287 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
288 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
289 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
290 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
291 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
293 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
294 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
296 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
297 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
298 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
299 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
301 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
302 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
303 between binary and text files.
305 The following programs now always use text input/output:
309 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
313 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
314 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
317 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
319 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
320 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
322 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
323 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
324 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
326 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
328 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
330 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
331 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
332 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
336 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
338 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
339 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
341 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
342 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
343 blocks until F contains N blocks.
347 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
348 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
352 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
353 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
354 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
358 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
359 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
363 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
365 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
367 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
371 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
372 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
373 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
375 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
376 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
377 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
378 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
379 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
381 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
385 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
386 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
387 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
389 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
391 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
392 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
393 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
394 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
396 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
398 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
399 rather than silently wrapping around.
401 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
402 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
404 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
405 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
407 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
408 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
409 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
412 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
414 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
416 ** Improved robustness
418 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
419 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
420 no matter how large the result.
422 ** Improved portability
424 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
425 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
427 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
429 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
430 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
431 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
433 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
434 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
438 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
439 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
441 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
443 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
444 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
445 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
446 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
448 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
449 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
451 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
452 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
453 categories if not specified by dircolors.
455 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
457 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
458 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
460 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
461 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
463 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
465 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
466 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
468 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
469 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
471 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
472 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
473 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
475 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
477 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
479 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
483 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
485 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
486 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
487 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
489 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
490 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
492 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
493 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
494 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
496 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
497 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
499 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
500 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
501 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
502 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
504 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
505 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
507 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
508 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
509 the file system does not support it.
511 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
513 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
514 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
516 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
518 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
519 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
521 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
522 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
523 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
524 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
526 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
527 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
530 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
531 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
532 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
533 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
535 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
536 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
537 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
538 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
540 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
541 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
543 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
545 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
546 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
547 reporting incorrect results.
551 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
552 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
554 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
557 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
559 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
560 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
562 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
563 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
565 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
568 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
569 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
570 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
571 the file name does not look like a page range.
573 printf has several changes:
575 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
576 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
578 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
579 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
580 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
582 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
583 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
586 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
587 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
589 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
590 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
592 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
594 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
595 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
597 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
599 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
601 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
602 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
603 when first encountering the directory.
607 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
608 output; POSIX requires this.
610 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
611 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
613 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
615 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
616 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
618 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
619 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
621 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
622 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
623 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
624 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
625 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
626 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
627 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
629 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
630 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
631 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
633 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
634 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
636 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
638 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
640 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
641 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
642 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
643 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
645 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
649 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
650 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
651 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
652 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
653 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
655 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
656 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
657 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
659 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
660 is longer than PATH_MAX.
662 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
663 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
665 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
666 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
667 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
668 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
669 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
671 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
672 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
674 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
675 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
677 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
679 nocreat do not create the output file
680 excl fail if the output file already exists
681 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
682 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
684 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
686 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
687 direct use direct I/O for data
688 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
689 sync likewise, but also for metadata
690 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
691 nofollow do not follow symlinks
692 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
694 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
696 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
697 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
700 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
701 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
702 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
703 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
704 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
705 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
707 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
708 list of NUL-terminated file names.
710 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
713 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
715 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
717 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
718 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
720 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
721 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
722 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
724 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
725 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
726 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
728 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
730 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
731 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
733 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
734 for compatibility with bash.
736 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
738 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
739 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
740 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
741 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
743 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
744 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
746 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
748 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
749 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
750 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
752 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
755 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
757 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
758 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
759 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
760 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
761 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
762 an offset, not as a file name.
764 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
765 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
767 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
768 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
770 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
771 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
773 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
774 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
775 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
777 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
778 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
780 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
781 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
785 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
787 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
789 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
793 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
794 or more arguments between partitions.
796 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
797 holes in the destination.
799 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
800 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
801 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
802 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
803 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
804 terminates immediately.
806 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
808 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
810 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
811 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
812 not the empty string.
814 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
815 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
819 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
820 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
821 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
824 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
831 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
835 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
836 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
838 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
839 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
841 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
842 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
843 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
846 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
850 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
851 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
853 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
854 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
856 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
857 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
858 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
860 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
862 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
865 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
867 ** Configuration option
869 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
870 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
874 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
875 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
879 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
880 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
881 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
884 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
885 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
886 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
887 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
888 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
889 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
890 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
893 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
897 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
898 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
899 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
901 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
902 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
904 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
906 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
907 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
908 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
909 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
911 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
913 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
914 not just the ones that reference directories
916 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
917 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
919 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
920 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
921 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
923 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
924 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
925 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
926 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
927 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
928 ragged when a datum was too wide.
930 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
935 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
936 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
938 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
940 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
942 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
944 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
945 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
947 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
948 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
950 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
952 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
956 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
958 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
960 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
961 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
962 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
963 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
964 resolution is the best we can do right now.
966 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
967 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
969 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
970 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
972 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
973 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
975 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
976 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
977 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
981 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
982 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
983 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
984 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
985 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
986 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
987 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
988 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
989 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
990 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
991 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
992 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
993 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
994 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
996 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
998 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
999 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1001 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1003 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1005 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1006 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1008 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1010 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1011 without a trailing newline.
1013 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1014 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1016 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1019 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1023 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1025 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1027 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1028 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1029 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1030 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1032 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1034 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1035 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1036 be printed without leading spaces.
1038 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1039 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1044 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1045 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1046 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1048 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1050 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1051 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1053 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1054 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1056 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1057 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1059 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1061 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1063 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1065 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1066 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1068 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1070 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1072 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1073 byte offsets are specified.
1076 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1079 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1082 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1083 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1084 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1085 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1086 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1087 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1088 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1089 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1090 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1091 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1092 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1093 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1094 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1095 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1096 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1097 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1098 directory where M has write access.
1099 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1100 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1101 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1104 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1105 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1106 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1107 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1108 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1109 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1110 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1111 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1112 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1113 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1114 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1115 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1116 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1117 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1118 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1119 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1120 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1121 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1122 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1123 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1124 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1125 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1126 appeared one additional time.
1128 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1129 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1130 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1131 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1134 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1135 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1136 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1137 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1138 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1139 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1140 if there were more than 338.
1142 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1143 - false --help now exits nonzero
1146 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1147 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1148 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1149 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1152 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1153 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1154 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1155 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1156 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1159 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1160 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1161 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1162 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1163 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1164 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1165 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1168 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1169 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1170 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1171 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1172 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1173 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1175 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1176 under certain unusual conditions
1177 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1178 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1181 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1182 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1183 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1184 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1185 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1186 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1187 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1188 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1189 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1190 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1191 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1192 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1193 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1194 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1195 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1196 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1199 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1200 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1203 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1204 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1205 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1206 involving hard-linked directories
1207 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1208 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1209 character-special and block files
1212 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1213 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1214 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1215 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1216 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1217 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1218 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1219 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1220 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1222 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1223 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1224 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1225 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1226 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1227 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1228 specified on the command line.
1229 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1230 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1231 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1232 the first file untouched.
1233 * readlink: new program
1234 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1235 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1236 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1237 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1238 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1239 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1242 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1243 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1244 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1245 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1246 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1247 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1248 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1249 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1250 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1251 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1252 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1253 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1255 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1256 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1257 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1259 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1260 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1261 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1262 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1263 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1264 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1265 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1266 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1269 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1270 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1273 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1274 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1275 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1276 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1277 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1278 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1279 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1282 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1283 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1285 ========================================================================
1286 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1287 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1290 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1292 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1293 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1294 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1295 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1296 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1297 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1298 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1299 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1300 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1301 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1302 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1303 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1305 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1306 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1307 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1308 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1310 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1313 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1315 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1316 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1317 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1318 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1319 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1320 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1321 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1324 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1325 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1326 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1327 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1328 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1329 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1330 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1331 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1332 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1333 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1334 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1335 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1336 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1337 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1338 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1339 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1341 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1342 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1344 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1345 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1346 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1347 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1348 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1349 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1351 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1352 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1353 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1354 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1355 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1356 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1357 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1359 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1360 the source files in the following example:
1361 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1362 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1363 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1364 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1365 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1366 links between source files with --preserve=links
1367 * cp accepts new options:
1368 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1369 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1370 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1371 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1372 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1373 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1374 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1375 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1376 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1378 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1379 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1380 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1381 even though it's older than dest.
1382 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1383 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1384 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1385 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1386 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1388 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1389 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1390 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1391 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1392 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1393 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1394 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1396 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1397 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1398 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1400 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1401 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1402 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1403 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1404 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1405 This is the default.
1407 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1408 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1409 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1410 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1411 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1413 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1416 ========================================================================
1417 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1418 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1421 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1422 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1424 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1425 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1426 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1427 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1428 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1430 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1431 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1432 that specifies a non-directory
1435 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1436 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1437 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1438 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1439 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1440 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1441 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1442 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1443 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1444 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1445 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1446 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1447 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1448 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1449 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1450 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1451 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1452 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1453 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1454 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1455 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1456 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1457 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1458 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1460 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1461 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1462 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1464 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1466 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1467 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1469 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1470 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1471 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1472 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1473 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1475 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1476 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1477 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1478 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1479 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1481 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1483 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1484 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1485 * still more portability fixes
1486 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1487 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1489 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1491 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1493 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1495 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1496 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1497 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1498 there is any time remaining
1499 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1501 ========================================================================
1502 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1503 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1505 This package began as the union of the following:
1506 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.