1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7-dirty (????-??-??) [stable]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
10 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
11 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
12 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
13 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
14 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
15 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
16 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
18 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
19 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
20 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
21 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
22 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
23 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
24 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
25 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
27 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
28 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
29 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
32 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
36 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
37 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
39 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
40 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
41 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
43 ** Improved robustness
45 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
46 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
47 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
50 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
54 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
55 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
56 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
57 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
58 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
60 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
64 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
67 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
71 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
72 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
73 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
74 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
76 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
77 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
79 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
80 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
81 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
84 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
86 ** Improved robustness
88 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
89 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
91 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
92 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
93 or NFS-mounted partition.
95 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
96 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
100 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
101 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
102 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
103 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
104 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
105 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
107 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
108 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
110 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
111 or neglect to report file removal.
113 For the "groups" command:
115 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
116 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
118 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
120 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
122 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
126 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
127 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
130 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
132 ** Changes in behavior
134 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
135 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
136 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
137 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
139 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
140 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
141 a final `./' or `../' component.
143 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
144 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
147 ** Infrastructure changes
149 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
150 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
151 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
152 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
156 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
159 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
160 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
161 dirent.d_type support.
163 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
164 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
166 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
167 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
168 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
169 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
172 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
174 ** Changes in behavior
176 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
180 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
181 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
185 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
186 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
187 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
189 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
190 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
192 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
193 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
195 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
197 ** Improved robustness
199 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
200 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
201 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
203 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
204 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
207 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
208 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
210 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
211 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
213 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
214 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
216 ** Changes in behavior
218 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
219 where the two are distinct.
221 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
222 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
223 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
224 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
225 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
226 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
227 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
228 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
229 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
230 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
231 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
232 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
233 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
234 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
235 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
236 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
237 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
239 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
240 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
241 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
243 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
244 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
245 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
246 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
249 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
250 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
254 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
255 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
256 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
257 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
259 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
260 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
261 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
263 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
264 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
265 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
266 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
267 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
270 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
271 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
273 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
274 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
275 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
276 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
278 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
279 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
280 successful and the output is easier to parse.
282 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
283 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
284 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
285 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
287 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
288 and sticky) with the -m option.
290 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
291 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
292 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
293 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
294 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
296 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
297 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
299 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
303 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
304 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
305 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
306 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
308 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
310 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
312 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
313 silently ignoring one of them.
315 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
316 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
317 containing this change was 5.92.
319 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
320 automatically newline terminated.
322 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
323 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
324 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
325 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
328 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
329 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
330 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
333 ** Scheduled for removal
335 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
336 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
338 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
339 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
340 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
341 command to unlink a directory.
343 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
344 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
345 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
346 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
350 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
351 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
352 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
353 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
354 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
355 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
359 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
360 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
362 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
364 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
365 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
366 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
368 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
369 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
372 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
373 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
375 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
376 list directories before files.
378 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
379 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
380 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
381 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
384 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
386 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
388 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
389 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
390 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
392 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
393 list of NUL-terminated file names.
397 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
398 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
399 usually printing nothing.
401 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
403 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
404 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
405 them with hard-linked directories.
407 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
408 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
409 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
411 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
412 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
413 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
415 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
418 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
419 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
421 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
422 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
424 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
425 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
427 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
428 all command-line arguments.
430 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
432 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
434 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
435 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
437 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
439 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
440 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
441 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
442 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
443 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
445 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
446 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
448 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
449 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
450 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
451 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
453 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
455 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
459 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
460 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
462 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
463 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
465 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
466 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
468 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
469 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
471 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
472 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
474 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
476 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
477 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
478 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
481 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
483 ** Build-related bug fixes
485 installing .mo files would fail
488 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
492 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
494 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
497 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
501 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
502 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
506 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
508 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
509 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
511 ** Deprecated options
513 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
514 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
516 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
520 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
522 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
523 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
524 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
525 conforming to older POSIX versions.
527 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
530 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
536 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
541 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
543 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
545 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
546 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
547 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
549 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
550 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
551 problematic usages. These include:
553 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
554 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
555 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
556 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
557 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
558 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
559 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
560 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
561 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
563 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
564 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
566 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
567 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
568 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
569 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
571 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
572 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
573 between binary and text files.
575 The following programs now always use text input/output:
579 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
583 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
584 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
587 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
589 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
590 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
592 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
593 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
594 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
596 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
598 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
600 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
601 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
602 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
606 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
608 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
609 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
611 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
612 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
613 blocks until F contains N blocks.
617 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
618 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
622 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
623 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
624 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
628 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
629 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
633 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
635 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
637 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
641 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
642 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
643 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
645 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
646 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
647 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
648 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
649 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
651 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
655 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
656 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
657 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
659 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
661 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
662 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
663 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
664 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
666 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
668 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
669 rather than silently wrapping around.
671 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
672 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
674 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
675 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
677 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
678 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
679 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
682 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
684 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
686 ** Improved robustness
688 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
689 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
690 no matter how large the result.
692 ** Improved portability
694 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
695 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
697 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
699 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
700 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
701 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
703 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
704 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
708 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
709 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
711 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
713 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
714 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
715 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
716 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
718 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
719 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
721 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
722 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
723 categories if not specified by dircolors.
725 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
727 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
728 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
730 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
731 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
733 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
735 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
736 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
738 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
739 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
741 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
742 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
743 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
745 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
747 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
749 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
753 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
755 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
756 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
757 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
759 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
760 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
762 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
763 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
764 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
766 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
767 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
769 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
770 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
771 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
772 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
774 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
775 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
777 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
778 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
779 the file system does not support it.
781 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
783 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
784 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
786 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
788 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
789 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
791 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
792 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
793 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
794 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
796 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
797 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
800 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
801 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
802 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
803 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
805 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
806 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
807 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
808 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
810 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
811 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
813 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
815 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
816 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
817 reporting incorrect results.
821 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
822 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
824 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
827 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
829 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
830 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
832 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
833 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
835 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
838 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
839 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
840 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
841 the file name does not look like a page range.
843 printf has several changes:
845 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
846 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
848 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
849 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
850 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
852 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
853 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
856 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
857 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
859 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
860 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
862 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
864 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
865 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
867 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
869 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
871 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
872 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
873 when first encountering the directory.
877 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
878 output; POSIX requires this.
880 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
881 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
883 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
885 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
886 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
888 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
889 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
891 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
892 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
893 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
894 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
895 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
896 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
897 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
899 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
900 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
901 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
903 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
904 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
906 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
908 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
910 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
911 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
912 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
913 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
915 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
919 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
920 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
921 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
922 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
923 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
925 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
926 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
927 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
929 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
930 is longer than PATH_MAX.
932 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
933 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
935 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
936 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
937 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
938 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
939 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
941 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
942 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
944 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
945 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
947 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
949 nocreat do not create the output file
950 excl fail if the output file already exists
951 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
952 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
954 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
956 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
957 direct use direct I/O for data
958 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
959 sync likewise, but also for metadata
960 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
961 nofollow do not follow symlinks
962 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
964 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
966 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
967 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
970 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
971 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
972 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
973 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
974 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
975 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
977 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
978 list of NUL-terminated file names.
980 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
983 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
985 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
987 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
988 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
990 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
991 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
992 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
994 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
995 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
996 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
998 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1000 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1001 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1003 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1004 for compatibility with bash.
1006 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1008 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1009 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1010 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1011 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1013 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1014 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1016 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1017 ls supports TABSIZE.
1018 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1019 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1020 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1022 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1025 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1027 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1028 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1029 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1030 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1031 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1032 an offset, not as a file name.
1034 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1035 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1037 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1038 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1040 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1041 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1043 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1044 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1045 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1047 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1048 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1050 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1051 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1055 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1057 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1059 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1063 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1064 or more arguments between partitions.
1066 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1067 holes in the destination.
1069 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1070 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1071 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1072 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1073 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1074 terminates immediately.
1076 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1078 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1080 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1081 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1082 not the empty string.
1084 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1085 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1089 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1090 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1091 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1094 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1101 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1105 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1106 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1108 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1109 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1111 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1112 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1113 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1116 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1120 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1121 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1123 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1124 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1126 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1127 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1128 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1130 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1132 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1135 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1137 ** Configuration option
1139 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1140 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1144 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1145 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1149 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1150 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1151 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1154 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1155 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1156 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1157 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1158 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1159 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1160 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1163 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1167 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1168 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1169 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1171 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1172 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1174 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1176 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1177 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1178 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1179 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1181 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1183 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1184 not just the ones that reference directories
1186 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1187 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1189 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1190 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1191 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1193 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1194 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1195 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1196 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1197 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1198 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1200 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1205 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1206 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1208 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1210 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1212 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1214 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1215 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1217 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1218 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1220 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1222 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1226 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1228 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1230 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1231 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1232 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1233 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1234 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1236 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1237 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1239 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1240 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1242 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1243 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1245 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1246 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1247 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1251 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1252 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1253 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1254 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1255 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1256 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1257 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1258 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1259 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1260 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1261 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1262 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1263 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1264 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1266 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1268 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1269 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1271 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1273 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1275 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1276 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1278 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1280 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1281 without a trailing newline.
1283 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1284 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1286 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1289 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1293 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1295 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1297 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1298 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1299 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1300 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1302 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1304 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1305 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1306 be printed without leading spaces.
1308 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1309 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1314 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1315 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1316 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1318 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1320 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1321 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1323 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1324 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1326 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1327 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1329 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1331 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1333 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1335 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1336 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1338 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1340 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1342 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1343 byte offsets are specified.
1346 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1349 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1352 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1353 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1354 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1355 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1356 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1357 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1358 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1359 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1360 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1361 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1362 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1363 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1364 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1365 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1366 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1367 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1368 directory where M has write access.
1369 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1370 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1371 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1374 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1375 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1376 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1377 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1378 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1379 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1380 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1381 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1382 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1383 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1384 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1385 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1386 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1387 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1388 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1389 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1390 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1391 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1392 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1393 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1394 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1395 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1396 appeared one additional time.
1398 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1399 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1400 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1401 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1404 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1405 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1406 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1407 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1408 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1409 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1410 if there were more than 338.
1412 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1413 - false --help now exits nonzero
1416 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1417 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1418 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1419 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1422 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1423 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1424 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1425 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1426 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1429 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1430 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1431 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1432 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1433 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1434 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1435 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1438 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1439 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1440 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1441 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1442 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1443 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1445 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1446 under certain unusual conditions
1447 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1448 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1451 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1452 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1453 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1454 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1455 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1456 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1457 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1458 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1459 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1460 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1461 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1462 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1463 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1464 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1465 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1466 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1469 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1470 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1473 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1474 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1475 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1476 involving hard-linked directories
1477 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1478 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1479 character-special and block files
1482 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1483 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1484 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1485 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1486 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1487 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1488 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1489 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1490 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1492 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1493 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1494 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1495 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1496 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1497 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1498 specified on the command line.
1499 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1500 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1501 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1502 the first file untouched.
1503 * readlink: new program
1504 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1505 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1506 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1507 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1508 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1509 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1512 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1513 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1514 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1515 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1516 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1517 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1518 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1519 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1520 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1521 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1522 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1523 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1525 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1526 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1527 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1529 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1530 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1531 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1532 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1533 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1534 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1535 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1536 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1539 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1540 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1543 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1544 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1545 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1546 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1547 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1548 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1549 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1552 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1553 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1555 ========================================================================
1556 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1557 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1560 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1562 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1563 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1564 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1565 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1566 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1567 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1568 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1569 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1570 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1571 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1572 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1573 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1575 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1576 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1577 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1578 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1580 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1583 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1585 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1586 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1587 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1588 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1589 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1590 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1591 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1594 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1595 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1596 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1597 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1598 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1599 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1600 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1601 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1602 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1603 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1604 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1605 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1606 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1607 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1608 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1609 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1611 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1612 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1614 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1615 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1616 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1617 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1618 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1619 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1621 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1622 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1623 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1624 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1625 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1626 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1627 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1629 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1630 the source files in the following example:
1631 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1632 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1633 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1634 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1635 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1636 links between source files with --preserve=links
1637 * cp accepts new options:
1638 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1639 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1640 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1641 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1642 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1643 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1644 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1645 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1646 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1648 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1649 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1650 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1651 even though it's older than dest.
1652 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1653 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1654 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1655 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1656 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1658 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1659 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1660 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1661 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1662 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1663 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1664 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1666 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1667 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1668 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1670 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1671 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1672 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1673 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1674 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1675 This is the default.
1677 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1678 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1679 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1680 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1681 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1683 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1686 ========================================================================
1687 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1688 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1691 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1692 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1694 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1695 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1696 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1697 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1698 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1700 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1701 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1702 that specifies a non-directory
1705 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1706 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1707 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1708 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1709 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1710 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1711 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1712 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1713 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1714 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1715 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1716 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1717 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1718 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1719 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1720 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1721 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1722 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1723 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1724 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1725 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1726 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1727 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1728 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1730 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1731 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1732 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1734 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1736 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1737 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1739 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1740 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1741 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1742 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1743 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1745 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1746 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1747 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1748 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1749 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1751 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1753 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1754 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1755 * still more portability fixes
1756 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1757 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1759 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1761 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1763 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1765 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1766 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1767 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1768 there is any time remaining
1769 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1771 ========================================================================
1772 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1773 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1775 This package began as the union of the following:
1776 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1778 ========================================================================
1780 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1783 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1784 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1785 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1786 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1787 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1788 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.