1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (????-??-??) [stable]
7 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
8 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
9 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
12 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
16 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
18 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
19 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
20 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
21 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
23 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
24 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
26 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
27 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
29 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
30 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
32 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
33 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
34 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
35 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
37 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
38 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
39 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
40 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
41 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
42 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
44 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
45 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
47 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
48 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
49 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
51 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
52 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
54 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
55 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
57 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
58 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
59 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
60 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
62 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
63 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
65 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
66 in more cases when a directory is empty.
68 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
69 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
70 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
74 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
75 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
77 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
78 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
79 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
80 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
84 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
85 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
87 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
89 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
93 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
94 which have negative errno values.
98 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
102 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
106 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
107 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
110 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
114 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
115 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
116 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
118 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
119 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
120 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
121 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
125 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
126 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
127 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
128 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
131 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
135 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
137 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
138 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
139 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
142 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
146 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
147 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
149 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
151 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
153 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
155 ** Programs no longer installed by default
159 ** Changes in behavior
161 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
162 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
164 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
165 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
167 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
168 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
169 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
173 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
174 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
175 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
176 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
177 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
178 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
179 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
180 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
181 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
182 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
183 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
185 The following commands and options now support the standard size
186 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
187 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
190 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
193 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
194 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
195 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
197 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
198 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
199 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
204 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
205 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
206 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
207 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
209 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
210 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
211 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
212 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
213 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
214 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
215 of "make check" fail.
217 ** Remove deprecated options
219 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
220 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
221 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
222 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
223 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
225 ** Improved robustness
227 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
228 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
229 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
230 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
231 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
232 loss of the contents of a/f.
234 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
235 in its 35-colon command-line argument
239 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
240 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
241 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
243 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
244 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
245 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
246 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
248 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
249 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
250 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
251 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
252 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
253 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
254 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
255 destination is a symlink.
257 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
259 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
260 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
262 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
263 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
265 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
267 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
268 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
270 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
271 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
273 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
276 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
277 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
279 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
280 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
282 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
283 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
284 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
285 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
287 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
288 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
289 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
291 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
292 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
293 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
295 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
296 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
297 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
298 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
300 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
301 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
302 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
304 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
305 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
307 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
308 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
310 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
312 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
313 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
314 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
316 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
317 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
319 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
320 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
322 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
323 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
325 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
326 [present in the original version]
329 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
333 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
335 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
336 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
337 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
339 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
340 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
342 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
346 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
347 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
349 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
350 support but with insufficient /proc support.
352 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
353 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
355 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
356 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
357 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
358 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
359 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
360 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
362 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
363 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
366 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
367 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
369 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
372 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
373 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
374 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
376 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
377 directory is unreadable.
379 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
380 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
381 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
383 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
384 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
385 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
386 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
387 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
390 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
391 Before it would print nothing.
393 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
395 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
396 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
397 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
398 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
399 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
400 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
401 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
402 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
404 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
408 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
409 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
410 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
412 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
413 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
414 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
415 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
418 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
422 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
423 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
424 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
425 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
426 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
427 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
428 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
430 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
431 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
432 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
433 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
434 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
435 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
436 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
437 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
439 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
440 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
441 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
444 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
448 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
449 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
451 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
452 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
453 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
455 ** Improved robustness
457 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
458 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
459 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
462 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
466 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
467 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
468 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
469 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
470 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
472 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
476 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
479 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
483 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
484 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
485 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
486 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
488 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
489 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
491 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
492 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
493 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
496 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
498 ** Improved robustness
500 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
501 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
503 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
504 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
505 or NFS-mounted partition.
507 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
508 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
512 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
513 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
514 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
515 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
516 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
517 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
519 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
520 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
522 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
523 or neglect to report file removal.
525 For the "groups" command:
527 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
528 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
530 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
532 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
534 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
538 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
539 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
542 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
544 ** Changes in behavior
546 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
547 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
548 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
549 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
551 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
552 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
553 a final `./' or `../' component.
555 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
556 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
559 ** Infrastructure changes
561 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
562 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
563 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
564 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
568 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
571 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
572 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
573 dirent.d_type support.
575 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
576 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
578 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
579 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
580 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
581 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
584 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
586 ** Changes in behavior
588 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
592 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
593 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
597 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
598 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
599 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
601 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
602 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
604 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
605 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
607 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
609 ** Improved robustness
611 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
612 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
613 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
615 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
616 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
619 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
620 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
622 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
623 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
625 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
626 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
628 ** Changes in behavior
630 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
631 where the two are distinct.
633 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
634 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
635 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
636 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
637 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
638 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
639 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
640 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
641 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
642 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
643 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
644 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
645 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
646 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
647 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
648 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
649 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
651 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
652 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
653 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
655 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
656 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
657 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
658 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
661 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
662 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
666 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
667 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
668 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
669 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
671 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
672 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
673 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
675 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
676 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
677 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
678 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
679 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
682 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
683 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
685 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
686 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
687 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
688 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
690 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
691 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
692 successful and the output is easier to parse.
694 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
695 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
696 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
697 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
699 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
700 and sticky) with the -m option.
702 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
703 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
704 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
705 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
706 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
708 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
709 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
711 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
715 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
716 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
717 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
718 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
720 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
722 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
724 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
725 silently ignoring one of them.
727 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
728 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
729 containing this change was 5.92.
731 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
732 automatically newline terminated.
734 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
735 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
736 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
737 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
740 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
741 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
742 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
745 ** Scheduled for removal
747 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
748 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
750 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
751 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
752 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
753 command to unlink a directory.
755 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
756 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
757 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
758 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
762 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
763 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
764 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
765 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
766 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
767 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
771 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
772 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
774 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
776 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
777 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
778 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
780 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
781 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
784 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
785 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
787 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
788 list directories before files.
790 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
791 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
792 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
793 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
796 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
798 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
800 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
801 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
802 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
804 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
805 list of NUL-terminated file names.
809 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
810 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
811 usually printing nothing.
813 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
815 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
816 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
817 them with hard-linked directories.
819 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
820 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
821 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
823 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
824 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
825 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
827 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
830 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
831 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
833 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
834 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
836 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
837 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
839 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
840 all command-line arguments.
842 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
844 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
846 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
847 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
849 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
851 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
852 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
853 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
854 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
855 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
857 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
858 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
860 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
861 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
862 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
863 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
865 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
867 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
871 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
872 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
874 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
875 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
877 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
878 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
880 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
881 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
883 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
884 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
886 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
888 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
889 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
890 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
893 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
895 ** Build-related bug fixes
897 installing .mo files would fail
900 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
904 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
906 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
909 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
913 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
914 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
918 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
920 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
921 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
923 ** Deprecated options
925 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
926 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
928 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
932 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
934 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
935 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
936 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
937 conforming to older POSIX versions.
939 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
942 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
948 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
953 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
955 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
957 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
958 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
959 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
961 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
962 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
963 problematic usages. These include:
965 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
966 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
967 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
968 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
969 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
970 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
971 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
972 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
973 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
975 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
976 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
978 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
979 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
980 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
981 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
983 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
984 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
985 between binary and text files.
987 The following programs now always use text input/output:
991 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
995 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
996 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
999 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1001 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1002 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1004 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1005 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1006 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1008 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1010 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1012 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1013 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1014 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1018 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1020 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1021 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1023 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1024 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1025 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1029 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1030 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1034 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1035 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1036 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1040 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1041 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1045 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1047 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1049 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1053 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1054 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1055 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1057 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1058 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1059 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1060 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1061 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1063 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1067 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1068 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1069 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1071 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1073 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1074 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1075 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1076 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1078 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1080 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1081 rather than silently wrapping around.
1083 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1084 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1086 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1087 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1089 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1090 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1091 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1092 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1094 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1096 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1098 ** Improved robustness
1100 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1101 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1102 no matter how large the result.
1104 ** Improved portability
1106 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1107 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1109 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1111 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1112 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1113 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1115 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1116 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1120 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1121 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1123 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1125 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1126 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1127 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1128 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1130 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1131 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1133 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1134 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1135 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1137 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1139 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1140 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1142 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1143 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1145 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1147 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1148 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1150 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1151 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1153 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1154 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1155 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1157 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1159 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1161 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1165 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1167 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1168 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1169 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1171 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1172 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1174 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1175 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1176 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1178 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1179 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1181 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1182 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1183 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1184 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1186 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1187 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1189 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1190 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1191 the file system does not support it.
1193 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1195 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1196 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1198 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1200 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1201 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1203 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1204 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1205 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1206 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1208 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1209 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1212 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1213 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1214 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1215 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1217 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1218 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1219 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1220 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1222 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1223 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1225 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1227 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1228 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1229 reporting incorrect results.
1233 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1234 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1236 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1239 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1241 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1242 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1244 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1245 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1247 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1250 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1251 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1252 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1253 the file name does not look like a page range.
1255 printf has several changes:
1257 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1258 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1260 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1261 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1262 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1264 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1265 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1268 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1269 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1271 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1272 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1274 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1276 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1277 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1279 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1281 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1283 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1284 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1285 when first encountering the directory.
1289 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1290 output; POSIX requires this.
1292 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1293 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1295 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1297 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1298 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1300 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1301 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1303 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1304 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1305 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1306 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1307 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1308 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1309 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1311 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1312 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1313 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1315 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1316 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1318 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1320 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1322 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1323 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1324 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1325 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1327 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1331 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1332 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1333 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1334 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1335 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1337 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1338 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1339 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1341 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1342 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1344 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1345 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1347 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1348 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1349 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1350 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1351 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1353 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1354 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1356 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1357 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1359 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1361 nocreat do not create the output file
1362 excl fail if the output file already exists
1363 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1364 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1366 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1368 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1369 direct use direct I/O for data
1370 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1371 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1372 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1373 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1374 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1376 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1378 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1379 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1382 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1383 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1384 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1385 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1386 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1387 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1389 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1390 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1392 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1395 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1397 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1399 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1400 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1402 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1403 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1404 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1406 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1407 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1408 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1410 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1412 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1413 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1415 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1416 for compatibility with bash.
1418 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1420 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1421 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1422 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1423 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1425 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1426 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1428 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1429 ls supports TABSIZE.
1430 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1431 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1432 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1434 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1437 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1439 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1440 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1441 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1442 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1443 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1444 an offset, not as a file name.
1446 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1447 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1449 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1450 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1452 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1453 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1455 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1456 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1457 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1459 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1460 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1462 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1463 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1467 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1469 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1471 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1475 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1476 or more arguments between partitions.
1478 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1479 holes in the destination.
1481 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1482 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1483 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1484 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1485 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1486 terminates immediately.
1488 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1490 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1492 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1493 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1494 not the empty string.
1496 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1497 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1501 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1502 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1503 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1506 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1513 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1517 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1518 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1520 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1521 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1523 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1524 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1525 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1528 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1532 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1533 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1535 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1536 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1538 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1539 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1540 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1542 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1544 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1547 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1549 ** Configuration option
1551 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1552 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1556 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1557 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1561 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1562 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1563 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1566 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1567 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1568 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1569 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1570 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1571 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1572 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1575 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1579 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1580 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1581 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1583 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1584 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1586 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1588 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1589 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1590 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1591 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1593 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1595 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1596 not just the ones that reference directories
1598 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1599 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1601 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1602 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1603 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1605 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1606 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1607 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1608 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1609 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1610 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1612 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1617 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1618 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1620 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1622 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1624 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1626 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1627 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1629 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1630 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1632 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1634 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1638 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1640 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1642 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1643 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1644 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1645 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1646 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1648 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1649 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1651 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1652 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1654 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1655 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1657 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1658 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1659 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1663 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1664 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1665 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1666 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1667 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1668 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1669 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1670 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1671 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1672 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1673 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1674 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1675 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1676 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1678 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1680 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1681 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1683 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1685 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1687 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1688 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1690 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1692 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1693 without a trailing newline.
1695 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1696 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1698 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1701 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1705 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1707 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1709 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1710 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1711 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1712 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1714 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1716 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1717 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1718 be printed without leading spaces.
1720 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1721 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1726 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1727 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1728 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1730 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1732 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1733 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1735 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1736 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1738 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1739 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1741 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1743 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1745 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1747 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1748 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1750 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1752 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1754 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1755 byte offsets are specified.
1758 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1761 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1764 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1765 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1766 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1767 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1768 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1769 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1770 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1771 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1772 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1773 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1774 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1775 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1776 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1777 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1778 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1779 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1780 directory where M has write access.
1781 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1782 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1783 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1786 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1787 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1788 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1789 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1790 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1791 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1792 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1793 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1794 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1795 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1796 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1797 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1798 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1799 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1800 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1801 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1802 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1803 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1804 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1805 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1806 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1807 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1808 appeared one additional time.
1810 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1811 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1812 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1813 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1816 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1817 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1818 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1819 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1820 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1821 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1822 if there were more than 338.
1824 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1825 - false --help now exits nonzero
1828 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1829 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1830 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1831 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1834 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1835 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1836 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1837 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1838 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1841 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1842 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1843 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1844 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1845 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1846 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1847 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1850 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1851 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1852 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1853 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1854 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1855 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1857 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1858 under certain unusual conditions
1859 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1860 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1863 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1864 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1865 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1866 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1867 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1868 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1869 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1870 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1871 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1872 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1873 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1874 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1875 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1876 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1877 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1878 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1881 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1882 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1885 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1886 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1887 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1888 involving hard-linked directories
1889 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1890 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1891 character-special and block files
1894 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1895 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1896 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1897 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1898 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1899 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1900 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1901 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1902 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1904 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1905 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1906 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1907 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1908 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1909 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1910 specified on the command line.
1911 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1912 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1913 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1914 the first file untouched.
1915 * readlink: new program
1916 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1917 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1918 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1919 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1920 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1921 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1924 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1925 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1926 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1927 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1928 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1929 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1930 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1931 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1932 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1933 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1934 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1935 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1937 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1938 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1939 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1941 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1942 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1943 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1944 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1945 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1946 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1947 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1948 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1951 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1952 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1955 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1956 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1957 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1958 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1959 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1960 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1961 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1964 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1965 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1967 ========================================================================
1968 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1969 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1972 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1974 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1975 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1976 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1977 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1978 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1979 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1980 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1981 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1982 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1983 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1984 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1985 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1987 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1988 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1989 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1990 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1992 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1995 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1997 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1998 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1999 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2000 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2001 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2002 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2003 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2006 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2007 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2008 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2009 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2010 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2011 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2012 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2013 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2014 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2015 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2016 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2017 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2018 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2019 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2020 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2021 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2023 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2024 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2026 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2027 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2028 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2029 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2030 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2031 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2033 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2034 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2035 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2036 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2037 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2038 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2039 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2041 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2042 the source files in the following example:
2043 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2044 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2045 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2046 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2047 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2048 links between source files with --preserve=links
2049 * cp accepts new options:
2050 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2051 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2052 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2053 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2054 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2055 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2056 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2057 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2058 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2060 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2061 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2062 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2063 even though it's older than dest.
2064 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2065 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2066 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2067 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2068 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2070 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2071 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2072 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2073 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2074 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2075 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2076 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2078 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2079 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2080 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2082 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2083 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2084 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2085 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2086 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2087 This is the default.
2089 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2090 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2091 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2092 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2093 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2095 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2098 ========================================================================
2099 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2100 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2103 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2104 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2106 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2107 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2108 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2109 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2110 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2112 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2113 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2114 that specifies a non-directory
2117 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2118 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2119 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2120 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2121 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2122 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2123 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2124 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2125 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2126 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2127 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2128 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2129 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2130 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2131 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2132 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2133 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2134 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2135 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2136 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2137 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2138 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2139 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2140 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2142 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2143 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2144 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2146 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2148 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2149 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2151 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2152 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2153 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2154 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2155 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2157 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2158 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2159 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2160 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2161 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2163 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2165 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2166 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2167 * still more portability fixes
2168 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2169 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2171 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2173 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2175 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2177 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2178 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2179 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2180 there is any time remaining
2181 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2183 ========================================================================
2184 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2185 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2187 This package began as the union of the following:
2188 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2190 ========================================================================
2192 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2195 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2196 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2197 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2198 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2199 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2200 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.