1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 dd now accepts 'status=none' to suppress all informational output.
9 md5sum now accepts the --tag option to print BSD-style output with GNU
10 file name escaping. This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum,
11 sha384sum and sha512sum.
15 cp could read from freed memory and could even make corrupt copies.
16 This could happen with a very fragmented and sparse input file,
17 on GNU/Linux file systems supporting fiemap extent scanning.
18 This bug also affects mv when it resorts to copying, and install.
19 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.11]
21 cp --no-preserve=mode now no longer preserves the original file's
22 permissions but correctly sets mode specified by 0666 & ~umask
24 du no longer emits a "disk-corrupted"-style diagnostic when it detects
25 a directory cycle that is due to a bind-mounted directory. Instead,
26 it detects this precise type of cycle, diagnoses it as such and
27 eventually exits nonzero.
29 factor (when using gmp) would mistakenly declare some composite numbers
30 to be prime, e.g., 465658903, 2242724851, 6635692801 and many more.
31 The fix makes factor somewhat slower (~25%) for ranges of consecutive
32 numbers, and up to 8 times slower for some worst-case individual numbers.
33 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0, with GNU MP support]
35 ls now correctly colors dangling symlinks when listing their containing
36 directories, with orphaned symlink coloring disabled in LS_COLORS.
37 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.14]
39 rm -i -d now prompts the user then removes an empty directory, rather
40 than ignoring the -d option and failing with an 'Is a directory' error.
41 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.19, with the addition of --dir (-d)]
43 rm -r S/ (where S is a symlink-to-directory) no longer gives the invalid
44 "Too many levels of symbolic links" diagnostic.
45 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
47 seq now handles arbitrarily long non-negative whole numbers when the
48 increment is 1 and when no format-changing option is specified.
49 Before, this would infloop:
50 b=100000000000000000000; seq $b $b
51 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
53 ** Changes in behavior
55 nproc now diagnoses with an error, non option command line parameters.
59 factor's core has been rewritten for speed and increased range.
60 It can now factor numbers up to 2^128, even without GMP support.
61 Its speed is from a few times better (for small numbers) to over
62 10,000 times better (just below 2^64). The new code also runs a
63 deterministic primality test for each prime factor, not just a
66 seq is now up to 70 times faster than it was in coreutils-8.19 and prior,
67 but only with non-negative whole numbers, an increment of 1, and no
68 format-changing options.
70 stat and tail know about ZFS, VZFS and VMHGFS. stat -f --format=%T now
71 reports the file system type, and tail -f now uses inotify for files on
72 ZFS and VZFS file systems, rather than the default (for unknown file
73 system types) of issuing a warning and reverting to polling. tail -f
74 still uses polling for files on VMHGFS file systems.
78 root-only tests now check for permissions of our dummy user,
79 $NON_ROOT_USERNAME, before trying to run binaries from the build directory.
80 Before, we would get hard-to-diagnose reports of failing root-only tests.
81 Now, those tests are skipped with a useful diagnostic when the root tests
82 are run without following the instructions in README.
84 We now build most directories using non-recursive make rules. I.e.,
85 rather than running make in man/, lib/, src/, tests/, instead, the top
86 level Makefile.am includes a $dir/local.mk that describes how to build
87 the targets in the corresponding directory. Two directories remain
88 unconverted: po/, gnulib-tests/. One nice side-effect is that the more
89 accurate dependencies have eliminated a nagging occasional failure that
90 was seen when running parallel "make syntax-check".
93 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.19 (2012-08-20) [stable]
97 df now fails when the list of mounted file systems (/etc/mtab) cannot
98 be read, yet the file system type information is needed to process
99 certain options like -a, -l, -t and -x.
100 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
102 sort -u could fail to output one or more result lines.
103 For example, this command would fail to print "1":
104 (yes 7 | head -11; echo 1) | sort --p=1 -S32b -u
105 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
107 sort -u could read freed memory.
108 For example, this evokes a read from freed memory:
109 perl -le 'print "a\n"."0"x900'|valgrind sort --p=1 -S32b -u>/dev/null
110 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
114 rm now accepts the --dir (-d) option which makes it remove empty directories.
115 Since removing empty directories is relatively safe, this option can be
116 used as a part of the alias rm='rm --dir'. This improves compatibility
117 with Mac OS X and BSD systems which also honor the -d option.
120 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.18 (2012-08-12) [stable]
124 cksum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
125 processes will not intersperse their output.
126 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
128 date -d "$(printf '\xb0')" would print 00:00:00 with today's date
129 rather than diagnosing the invalid input. Now it reports this:
130 date: invalid date '\260'
131 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
133 df no longer outputs control characters present in the mount point name.
134 Such characters are replaced with '?', so for example, scripts consuming
135 lines output by df, can work reliably.
136 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
138 df --total now exits with an appropriate diagnostic and error code, when
139 file system --type options do not lead to a processed file system.
140 [This bug dates back to when --total was added in coreutils-7.0]
142 head --lines=-N (-n-N) now resets the read pointer of a seekable input file.
143 This means that "head -n-3" no longer consumes all of its input, and lines
144 not output by head may be processed by other programs. For example, this
145 command now prints the final line, 2, while before it would print nothing:
146 seq 2 > k; (head -n-1 > /dev/null; cat) < k
147 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
149 ls --color would mis-color relative-named symlinks in /
150 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.17]
152 split now ensures it doesn't overwrite the input file with generated output.
153 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
155 stat and df now report the correct file system usage,
156 in all situations on GNU/Linux, by correctly determining the block size.
157 [df bug since coreutils-5.0.91, stat bug since the initial implementation]
159 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on AUFS or PanFS file systems
160 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
161 support, but even now, its magic number isn't in the usual place.]
165 stat -f recognizes the new remote file system types: aufs, panfs.
167 ** Changes in behavior
169 su: this program has been removed. We stopped installing "su" by
170 default with the release of coreutils-6.9.90 on 2007-12-01. Now,
171 that the util-linux package has the union of the Suse and Fedora
172 patches as well as enough support to build on the Hurd, we no longer
173 have any reason to include it here.
177 sort avoids redundant processing in the presence of inaccessible inputs,
178 or unwritable output. Sort now diagnoses certain errors at start-up,
179 rather than after potentially expensive processing.
181 sort now allocates no more than 75% of physical memory by default,
182 to better share system resources, and thus operate more efficiently.
183 [The default max memory usage changed from 50% to 100% in coreutils-8.16]
186 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.17 (2012-05-10) [stable]
190 id and groups, when invoked with no user name argument, would print
191 the default group ID listed in the password database, and sometimes
192 that ID would be neither real nor effective. For example, when run
193 set-GID, or in a session for which the default group has just been
194 changed, the new group ID would be listed, even though it is not
195 yet effective. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
197 cp S D is no longer subject to a race: if an existing D were removed
198 between the initial stat and subsequent open-without-O_CREATE, cp would
199 fail with a confusing diagnostic saying that the destination, D, was not
200 found. Now, in this unusual case, it retries the open (but with O_CREATE),
201 and hence usually succeeds. With NFS attribute caching, the condition
202 was particularly easy to trigger, since there, the removal of D could
203 precede the initial stat. [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
205 split --number=C /dev/null no longer appears to infloop on GNU/Hurd
206 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
208 stat no longer reports a negative file size as a huge positive number.
209 [bug present since 'stat' was introduced in fileutils-4.1.9]
213 split and truncate now allow any seekable files in situations where
214 the file size is needed, instead of insisting on regular files.
216 fmt now accepts the --goal=WIDTH (-g) option.
218 stat -f recognizes new file system types: bdevfs, inodefs, qnx6
220 ** Changes in behavior
222 cp,mv,install,cat,split: now read and write a minimum of 64KiB at a time.
223 This was previously 32KiB and increasing to 64KiB was seen to increase
224 throughput by about 10% when reading cached files on 64 bit GNU/Linux.
226 cp --attributes-only no longer truncates any existing destination file,
227 allowing for more general copying of attributes from one file to another.
230 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.16 (2012-03-26) [stable]
234 As a GNU extension, 'chmod', 'mkdir', and 'install' now accept operators
235 '-', '+', '=' followed by octal modes; for example, 'chmod +40 FOO' enables
236 and 'chmod -40 FOO' disables FOO's group-read permissions. Operator
237 numeric modes can be combined with symbolic modes by separating them with
238 commas; for example, =0,u+r clears all permissions except for enabling
239 user-read permissions. Unlike ordinary numeric modes, operator numeric
240 modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits; for example,
241 'chmod =0 FOO' clears all of FOO's permissions, including setuid and setgid.
243 Also, ordinary numeric modes with five or more digits no longer preserve
244 setuid and setgid bits, so that 'chmod 00755 FOO' now clears FOO's setuid
245 and setgid bits. This allows scripts to be portable to other systems which
246 lack the GNU extension mentioned previously, and where ordinary numeric
247 modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits.
249 dd now accepts the count_bytes, skip_bytes iflags and the seek_bytes
250 oflag, to more easily allow processing portions of a file.
252 dd now accepts the conv=sparse flag to attempt to create sparse
253 output, by seeking rather than writing to the output file.
255 ln now accepts the --relative option, to generate a relative
256 symbolic link to a target, irrespective of how the target is specified.
258 split now accepts an optional "from" argument to --numeric-suffixes,
259 which changes the start number from the default of 0.
261 split now accepts the --additional-suffix option, to append an
262 additional static suffix to output file names.
264 basename now supports the -a and -s options, which allow processing
265 of more than one argument at a time. Also the complementary
266 -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character.
268 dirname now supports more than one argument. Also the complementary
269 -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character.
273 du --one-file-system (-x) would ignore any non-directory specified on
274 the command line. For example, "touch f; du -x f" would print nothing.
275 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.15]
277 mv now lets you move a symlink onto a same-inode destination file that
278 has two or more hard links. Before, it would reject that, saying that
279 they are the same, implicitly warning you that the move would result in
280 data loss. In this unusual case, when not moving the symlink onto its
281 referent, there is no risk of data loss, since the symlink will
282 typically still point to one of the hard links.
284 "mv A B" could succeed, yet A would remain. This would happen only when
285 both A and B were hard links to the same symlink, and with a kernel for
286 which rename("A","B") does nothing and returns 0 (POSIX mandates this
287 surprising rename no-op behavior). Now, mv handles this case by skipping
288 the usually-useless rename and simply unlinking A.
290 realpath no longer mishandles a root directory. This was most
291 noticeable on platforms where // is a different directory than /,
292 but could also be observed with --relative-base=/ or
293 --relative-to=/. [bug since the beginning, in 8.15]
297 ls can be much more efficient, especially with large directories on file
298 systems for which getfilecon-, ACL-check- and XATTR-check-induced syscalls
299 fail with ENOTSUP or similar.
301 'realpath --relative-base=dir' in isolation now implies '--relative-to=dir'
302 instead of causing a usage failure.
304 split now supports an unlimited number of split files as default behavior.
307 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.15 (2012-01-06) [stable]
311 realpath: print resolved file names.
315 du -x no longer counts root directories of other file systems.
316 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
318 ls --color many-entry-directory was uninterruptible for too long
319 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.2.1]
321 ls's -k option no longer affects how ls -l outputs file sizes.
322 It now affects only the per-directory block counts written by -l,
323 and the sizes written by -s. This is for compatibility with BSD
324 and with POSIX 2008. Because -k is no longer equivalent to
325 --block-size=1KiB, a new long option --kibibyte stands for -k.
326 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.4]
328 ls -l would leak a little memory (security context string) for each
329 nonempty directory listed on the command line, when using SELinux.
330 [bug probably introduced in coreutils-6.10 with SELinux support]
332 rm -rf DIR would fail with "Device or resource busy" on Cygwin with NWFS
333 and NcFsd file systems. This did not affect Unix/Linux-based kernels.
334 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0, when rm began using fts]
336 split -n 1/2 FILE no longer fails when operating on a growing file, or
337 (on some systems) when operating on a non-regular file like /dev/zero.
338 It would report "/dev/zero: No such file or directory" even though
339 the file obviously exists. Same for -n l/2.
340 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8, with the addition of the -n option]
342 stat -f now recognizes the FhGFS and PipeFS file system types.
344 tac no longer fails to handle two or more non-seekable inputs
345 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
347 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on GPFS or FhGFS file systems
348 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
349 support, but the new magic numbers weren't in the usual places then.]
351 ** Changes in behavior
353 df avoids long UUID-including file system names in the default listing.
354 With recent enough kernel/tools, these long names would be used, pushing
355 second and subsequent columns far to the right. Now, when a long name
356 refers to a symlink, and no file systems are specified, df prints the
357 usually-short referent instead.
359 tail -f now uses polling (not inotify) when any of its file arguments
360 resides on a file system of unknown type. In addition, for each such
361 argument, tail -f prints a warning with the FS type magic number and a
362 request to report it to the bug-reporting address.
365 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.14 (2011-10-12) [stable]
369 ls --dereference no longer outputs erroneous "argetm" strings for
370 dangling symlinks when an 'ln=target' entry is in $LS_COLORS.
371 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
373 ls -lL symlink once again properly prints "+" when the referent has an ACL.
374 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.13]
376 sort -g no longer infloops for certain inputs containing NaNs
377 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
381 md5sum --check now supports the -r format from the corresponding BSD tool.
382 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
384 pwd now works also on systems without openat. On such systems, pwd
385 would fail when run from a directory whose absolute name contained
386 more than PATH_MAX / 3 components. The df, stat and readlink programs
387 are also affected due to their use of the canonicalize_* functions.
389 ** Changes in behavior
391 timeout now only processes the first signal received from the set
392 it is handling (SIGTERM, SIGINT, ...). This is to support systems that
393 implicitly create threads for some timer functions (like GNU/kFreeBSD).
397 "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files.
398 xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing
399 only .tar.xz files is enough.
402 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.13 (2011-09-08) [stable]
406 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
407 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
408 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
410 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
411 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
413 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
414 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
415 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
416 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
417 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
419 fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
420 proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
421 Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
422 Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
423 [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
424 introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
425 as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
426 chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
428 pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at.
429 [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q]
431 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
432 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
434 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
435 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
437 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
438 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
439 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
441 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
442 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
443 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
444 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
446 ** Changes in behavior
448 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
449 when -v or -c specified.
451 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
452 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
456 date now accepts ISO 8601 date-time strings with "T" as the
457 separator. It has long parsed dates like "2004-02-29 16:21:42"
458 with a space between the date and time strings. Now it also parses
459 "2004-02-29T16:21:42" and fractional-second and time-zone-annotated
460 variants like "2004-02-29T16:21:42.333-07:00"
462 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
463 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
464 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
466 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
467 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
468 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
469 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
470 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
471 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
472 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
474 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
475 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
476 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
480 cp -p now copies trivial NSFv4 ACLs on Solaris 10. Before, it would
481 mistakenly apply a non-trivial ACL to the destination file.
483 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
486 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
487 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
489 join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
490 unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
492 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
493 For example 'shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2' no longer exhausts memory.
495 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
497 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
501 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
502 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
504 Numerous portability and build improvements inherited via gnulib.
507 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
511 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
512 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
514 ** Changes in behavior
516 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
517 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
518 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
519 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
520 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
521 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
523 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
524 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
525 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
529 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
532 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
536 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
537 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
538 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
540 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
541 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
542 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
544 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
545 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
546 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
548 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
549 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
551 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
552 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
554 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
555 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
557 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
558 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
562 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
563 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
564 processed portion thereof.
566 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
567 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
569 ** Changes in behavior
571 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
572 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
573 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
575 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
576 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
577 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
579 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
580 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
582 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
583 Use --preserve-context instead.
585 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
588 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
592 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
593 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
594 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
595 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
596 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
598 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
599 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
601 join -v2 now ensures the default output format prints the match field
602 at the start of the line when it is different to the match field for
603 the first file. [bug present in "the beginning".]
605 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
606 reject file names invalid for that file system.
608 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
609 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
613 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
614 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
615 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
616 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
617 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
618 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
619 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
620 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
622 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
623 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
624 the same number of fields are output for each line.
626 ** Changes in behavior
628 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
629 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
630 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
633 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
637 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
638 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
639 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
642 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
646 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
647 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
649 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
650 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
652 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
653 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
655 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
656 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
657 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
658 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
660 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
661 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
663 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
664 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
665 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
667 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
669 ** Changes in behavior
671 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
672 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
673 to the number of available processors.
677 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
680 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
684 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
685 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
686 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
687 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
689 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
690 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
691 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
693 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
694 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
696 ** Changes in behavior
698 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
699 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
701 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
702 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
703 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
704 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
705 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
706 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
708 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
709 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
710 the same way as the others.
713 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
717 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
718 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
719 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
721 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
722 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
724 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
725 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
726 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
728 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
729 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
731 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
732 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
734 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
735 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
736 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
738 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
739 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
740 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
741 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
745 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
746 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
748 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
751 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
752 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
754 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
756 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
757 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
758 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
760 ** Changes in behavior
762 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
763 rather than its aliased target.
765 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
766 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
767 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
769 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
770 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
771 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
772 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
773 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
774 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
775 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
776 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
778 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
780 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
782 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
783 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
786 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
787 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
788 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
789 control like taskset for example.
791 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
793 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
794 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
795 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
796 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
797 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
798 includes %C when context information is available.
800 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
801 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
802 rather than a file system attribute.
804 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
805 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
806 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
807 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
809 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
810 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
811 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
813 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
814 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
815 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
818 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
822 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
823 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
825 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
827 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
828 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
830 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
831 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
832 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
833 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
835 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
836 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
837 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
841 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
842 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
844 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
845 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
846 duration after the initial signal was sent.
848 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
849 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
850 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
851 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
852 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
853 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
854 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
855 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
856 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
858 ** Changes in behavior
860 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
861 sequence when it would be a no-op.
863 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
864 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
867 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
871 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
872 of available processors, which may not have been the case
873 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
874 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
878 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
879 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
881 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
882 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
883 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
884 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
886 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
887 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
888 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
891 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
895 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
896 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
897 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
899 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
900 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
901 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
903 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
904 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
906 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
907 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
908 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
909 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
911 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
912 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
913 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
915 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
916 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
917 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
918 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
920 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
921 renamed-aside and then recreated.
922 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
924 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
925 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
926 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
927 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
929 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
930 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
931 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
933 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
934 processes will not intersperse their output.
935 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
938 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
942 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
943 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
945 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
946 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
948 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
949 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
950 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
951 the presence of the empty string argument.
952 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
954 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
955 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
956 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
957 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
959 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
960 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
962 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
963 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
964 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
966 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
967 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
968 and with a malicious user on the same system
969 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
970 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
973 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
977 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
978 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
979 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
981 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
982 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
983 offending directory and all "contents."
985 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
986 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
987 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
989 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
990 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
991 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
993 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
994 processes will not intersperse their output.
995 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
996 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
998 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
999 output the name of the file to stdout.
1000 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1002 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
1003 call fails with errno == EACCES.
1004 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1006 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
1007 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
1010 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
1011 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
1012 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
1014 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
1015 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
1016 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
1017 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
1018 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
1019 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1021 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
1022 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
1023 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
1024 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
1026 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
1027 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
1029 ** Changes in behavior
1031 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
1032 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
1033 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
1034 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
1035 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
1037 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
1038 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
1039 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
1040 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
1042 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
1044 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
1045 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
1046 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
1047 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
1048 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
1052 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
1056 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
1057 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
1059 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
1060 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
1062 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
1063 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
1064 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
1066 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
1067 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
1070 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
1074 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
1075 when the source file doesn't have write access.
1076 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1078 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
1079 to accommodate leap seconds.
1080 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1082 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
1083 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
1084 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1086 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
1088 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
1089 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
1090 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
1092 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
1093 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
1094 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
1095 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
1096 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
1100 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
1101 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
1102 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceding name is a
1103 directory or a symlink to a directory.
1105 ** Changes in behavior
1107 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
1108 environment variable is set.
1110 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
1111 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
1112 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
1116 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
1117 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
1118 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
1119 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
1121 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
1122 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
1123 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
1124 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
1128 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
1129 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
1130 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
1132 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
1133 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
1134 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
1135 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
1136 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
1137 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
1138 another improvement:
1140 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
1141 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
1144 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
1148 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
1149 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
1150 and libraries tested at configure time.
1151 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1153 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
1154 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1156 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
1157 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1159 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
1160 printing a summary to stderr.
1161 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1163 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
1164 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
1165 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
1167 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
1168 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
1170 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
1171 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
1172 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
1173 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1175 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
1176 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
1177 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
1178 which is relatively unusual.
1179 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1181 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
1182 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
1183 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
1184 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
1185 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
1186 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
1187 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1191 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
1192 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
1193 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
1194 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
1195 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
1199 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
1200 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
1202 ** Changes in behavior
1204 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
1205 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
1206 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
1207 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
1208 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
1211 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
1215 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
1216 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
1218 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
1219 before data copying has started.
1221 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
1222 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1224 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
1225 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
1226 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
1227 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1229 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
1230 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
1231 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
1232 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
1234 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
1239 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
1240 for its standard streams.
1242 ** Changes in behavior
1244 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
1245 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
1246 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
1247 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
1248 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
1249 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
1251 ** Deprecated options
1253 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
1254 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
1258 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
1260 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
1261 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
1262 a btrfs file system.
1264 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
1266 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
1267 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
1269 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
1270 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
1273 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
1277 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
1278 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
1279 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
1280 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
1282 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
1283 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
1284 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
1285 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
1286 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
1291 make check: two tests have been corrected
1295 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
1296 inherited from gnulib.
1299 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
1303 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
1304 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
1305 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
1306 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
1308 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
1309 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
1311 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
1313 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
1314 systems without xattr support.
1316 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
1317 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
1318 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1320 ** Changes in behavior
1322 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
1323 This is mainly noticeable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
1324 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
1325 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
1327 ** Improved robustness
1329 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
1330 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
1331 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
1332 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
1333 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
1334 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
1335 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
1336 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
1337 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1341 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
1342 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
1344 'id -G $USER' now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
1345 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
1346 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
1347 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1348 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1351 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
1355 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
1356 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
1357 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
1361 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
1362 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
1363 data was read, or on process exit.
1364 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1366 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
1367 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
1368 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
1369 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1371 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
1372 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
1373 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
1374 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1376 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
1377 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
1379 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
1380 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1382 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
1383 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
1384 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
1386 ** Changes in behavior
1388 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
1389 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
1390 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
1392 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
1393 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
1395 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
1396 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
1397 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
1400 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
1404 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
1406 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
1407 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
1408 install: Never copies xattrs
1410 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
1411 from overwriting any existing destination file
1413 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
1414 mode where this feature is available.
1416 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
1417 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
1418 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
1419 do not modify the destination at all.
1421 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
1423 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
1427 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
1428 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1430 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1432 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1433 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1435 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1436 processing the first file name
1438 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1439 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1440 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1441 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1443 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1444 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1446 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1447 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1450 ** Changes in behavior
1452 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1453 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1455 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1456 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1457 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1459 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1460 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1462 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1464 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1465 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1466 is still marked with a '+'.
1469 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1473 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1474 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1478 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1479 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1480 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1481 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1482 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1483 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1485 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1486 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1488 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1489 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1491 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1493 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1494 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1495 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1497 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1498 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1500 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1501 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1502 used to factor large numbers.
1504 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1507 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1509 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1511 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1512 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1514 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1515 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1516 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1517 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1519 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1520 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1521 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1523 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1524 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1528 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1530 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1531 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1533 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1534 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1536 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1538 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1539 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1543 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1544 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1545 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1547 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1549 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1550 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1551 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1553 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1554 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1555 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1557 ** Changes in behavior
1559 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1560 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1563 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1567 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1568 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1569 'futimens' system calls.
1573 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1575 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1576 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1577 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1579 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1580 with no USERNAME argument.
1582 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1583 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1584 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1586 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1587 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1588 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1589 number of fields for some inputs.
1591 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1592 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1594 ** Changes in behavior
1596 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1597 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1600 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1604 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1606 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1607 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1608 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1609 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1611 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1612 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1614 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1615 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1617 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1618 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1620 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1621 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1622 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1623 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1625 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1626 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1627 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1628 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1629 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1630 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1632 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1633 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1635 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1636 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1637 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1639 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1640 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1642 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1643 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1645 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1646 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1647 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1648 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1650 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1651 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1653 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1654 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1656 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1657 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1658 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1662 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1663 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1665 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1666 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1667 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1668 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1672 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1673 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1675 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1677 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1681 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1682 which have negative errno values.
1686 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1690 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1694 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1695 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1698 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1702 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1703 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1704 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1706 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1707 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1708 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1709 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1713 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1714 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1715 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1716 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1719 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1723 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1725 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1726 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1727 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1730 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1734 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1735 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1737 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1739 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1741 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1743 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1747 ** Changes in behavior
1749 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1750 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1752 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1753 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1755 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1756 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1757 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1761 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1762 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1763 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1764 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1765 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1766 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1767 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1768 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1769 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1770 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1771 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1773 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1774 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1775 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1778 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1781 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1782 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1783 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1785 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1786 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1787 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1790 ** New build options
1792 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1793 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1794 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1795 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1797 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1798 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1799 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1800 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1801 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1802 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1803 of "make check" fail.
1805 ** Remove deprecated options
1807 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1808 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1809 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1810 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1811 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1813 ** Improved robustness
1815 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1816 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1817 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1818 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1819 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1820 loss of the contents of a/f.
1822 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1823 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1827 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1828 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1829 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1831 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1832 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1833 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1834 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1836 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1837 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1838 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1839 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1840 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1841 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1842 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1843 destination is a symlink.
1845 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1847 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1848 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1850 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1851 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1853 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1855 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1856 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1858 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1859 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1861 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1864 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1865 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1867 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1868 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1870 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1871 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1872 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1873 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1875 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1876 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1877 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1879 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1880 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1881 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1883 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1884 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1885 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1886 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1888 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1889 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1890 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1892 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1893 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1895 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1896 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1898 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1900 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1901 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1902 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1904 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1905 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1907 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1908 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1910 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1911 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1913 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1914 [present in the original version]
1917 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1921 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1923 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1924 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1925 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1927 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1928 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1930 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1934 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1935 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1937 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1938 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1940 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1941 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1943 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1944 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1945 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1946 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1947 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1948 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1950 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1951 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1954 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1955 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1957 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1960 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1961 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1962 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1964 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1965 directory is unreadable.
1967 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1968 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1969 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1971 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1972 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1973 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1974 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1975 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1978 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1979 Before it would print nothing.
1981 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1983 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1984 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1985 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1986 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1987 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1988 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1989 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1990 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1992 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1996 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1997 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1998 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
2000 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
2001 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
2002 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
2003 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
2006 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
2010 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
2011 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
2012 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
2013 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
2014 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
2015 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
2016 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
2018 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
2019 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
2020 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
2021 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
2022 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
2023 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
2024 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
2025 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
2027 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
2028 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
2029 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
2032 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
2036 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
2037 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
2039 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
2040 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
2041 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
2043 ** Improved robustness
2045 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
2046 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
2047 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
2050 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
2054 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
2055 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
2056 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
2057 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
2058 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
2060 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
2064 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
2067 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
2071 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
2072 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
2073 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
2074 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
2076 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
2077 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
2079 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
2080 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
2081 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
2084 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
2086 ** Improved robustness
2088 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
2089 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
2091 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
2092 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
2093 or NFS-mounted partition.
2095 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
2096 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
2100 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
2101 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
2102 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
2103 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
2104 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
2105 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
2107 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
2108 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
2110 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
2111 or neglect to report file removal.
2113 For the "groups" command:
2115 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
2116 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
2118 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
2120 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
2122 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
2126 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
2127 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
2130 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
2132 ** Changes in behavior
2134 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
2135 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
2136 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
2137 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
2139 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., 'rm -fr /'
2140 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
2141 a final './' or '../' component.
2143 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
2144 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
2145 this only for pipes.
2147 ** Infrastructure changes
2149 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
2150 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
2151 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
2152 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
2156 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
2157 name is "." or "..".
2159 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
2160 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
2161 dirent.d_type support.
2163 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
2164 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
2166 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
2167 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
2168 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
2169 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
2172 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
2174 ** Changes in behavior
2176 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
2180 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
2181 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
2185 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
2186 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
2187 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
2189 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
2190 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2192 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
2193 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2195 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
2197 ** Improved robustness
2199 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
2200 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
2201 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
2203 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
2204 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
2207 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
2208 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
2210 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
2211 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
2213 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
2214 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
2216 ** Changes in behavior
2218 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
2219 where the two are distinct.
2221 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
2222 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
2223 'chmod 755 DIR' and 'chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
2224 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
2225 similarly for 'mkdir -m 755 DIR' and 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
2226 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
2227 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
2228 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., 'mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
2229 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
2230 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
2231 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
2232 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
2233 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 'mkdir -m
2234 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but 'chmod 777 D' clears it.
2235 Conversely, Solaris 10 'mkdir -m 777 D', 'mkdir -m g-s D', and
2236 'chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
2237 something like 'chmod g-s D' to clear it.
2239 'cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
2240 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
2241 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
2243 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
2244 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
2245 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
2246 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
2249 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
2250 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
2254 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
2255 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
2256 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
2257 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
2259 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
2260 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
2261 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
2263 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
2264 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
2265 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
2266 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
2267 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
2270 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
2271 e.g., 'mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
2273 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
2274 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
2275 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
2276 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
2278 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
2279 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
2280 successful and the output is easier to parse.
2282 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
2283 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
2284 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
2285 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
2287 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
2288 and sticky) with the -m option.
2290 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
2291 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
2292 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
2293 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
2294 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
2296 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
2297 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
2299 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
2303 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
2304 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
2305 You no longer need the '-f%.f' in 'seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
2306 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
2308 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
2310 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
2312 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
2313 silently ignoring one of them.
2315 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
2316 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
2317 containing this change was 5.92.
2319 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
2320 automatically newline terminated.
2322 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
2323 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
2324 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
2325 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
2328 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
2329 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2330 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
2333 ** Scheduled for removal
2335 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
2336 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
2338 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
2339 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
2340 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
2341 command to unlink a directory.
2343 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
2344 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
2345 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
2346 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
2350 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
2351 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
2352 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
2353 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
2354 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
2355 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
2359 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
2360 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
2362 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
2364 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
2365 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
2366 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
2368 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
2369 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
2372 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
2373 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
2375 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
2376 list directories before files.
2378 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
2379 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
2380 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
2381 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
2384 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
2386 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and 'R' ordering option.
2388 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
2389 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
2390 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
2392 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2393 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2397 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
2398 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
2399 usually printing nothing.
2401 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
2403 When 'cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
2404 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
2405 them with hard-linked directories.
2407 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
2408 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
2409 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
2411 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
2412 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
2413 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
2415 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
2418 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
2419 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
2421 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
2422 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
2424 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
2425 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
2427 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
2428 all command-line arguments.
2430 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2432 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2434 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2435 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2437 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2439 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2440 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2441 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2442 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2443 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2445 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2446 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2448 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2449 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2450 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2451 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2453 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2455 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2459 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2460 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2462 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2463 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2465 md5sum once again defaults to using the ' ' non-binary marker
2466 (rather than the '*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2468 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2469 a directory like 'nonexistent/.'
2471 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2472 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2474 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2476 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2477 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2478 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2481 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2483 ** Build-related bug fixes
2485 installing .mo files would fail
2488 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2492 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2494 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2497 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2501 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2502 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2506 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2508 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2509 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2511 ** Deprecated options
2513 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2514 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use '-k' instead.
2516 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2520 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2522 ** Bring back support for 'head -NUM', 'tail -NUM', etc. even when
2523 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2524 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2525 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2527 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2530 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2536 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2541 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2543 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2545 date -I TIMESPEC (use 'date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2546 od -w WIDTH (use 'od -wWIDTH' instead)
2547 pr -S STRING (use 'pr -SSTRING' instead)
2549 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2550 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2551 problematic usages. These include:
2553 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2554 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2555 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2556 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2557 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2558 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2559 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2560 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2561 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2563 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2564 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2566 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2567 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2568 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2569 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2571 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2572 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2573 between binary and text files.
2575 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2579 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2583 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2584 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2586 head tac tail tee tr
2587 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2589 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2590 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2592 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2593 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2594 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2596 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2598 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2600 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2601 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2602 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2606 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2608 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2609 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2611 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2612 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2613 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2617 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2618 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2622 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2623 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2624 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2628 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2629 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2633 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2635 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2637 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2641 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2642 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2643 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2645 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2646 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2647 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2648 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2649 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2651 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2655 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2656 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2657 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2659 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2661 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2662 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2663 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2664 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2666 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2668 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2669 rather than silently wrapping around.
2671 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2672 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2674 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2675 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2677 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the '.'-relative
2678 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2679 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2680 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2682 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2684 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2686 ** Improved robustness
2688 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2689 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2690 no matter how large the result.
2692 ** Improved portability
2694 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2695 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2697 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2699 'rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2700 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2701 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2703 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2704 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2708 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2709 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2711 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2713 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2714 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2715 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2716 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2718 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2719 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2721 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2722 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2723 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2725 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2727 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2728 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2730 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2731 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2733 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2735 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2736 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2738 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2739 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2741 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2742 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2743 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2745 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2747 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2749 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2753 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2755 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2756 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2757 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2759 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2760 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2762 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2763 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2764 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2766 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2767 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2769 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2770 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2771 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2772 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2774 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2775 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2777 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2778 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2779 the file system does not support it.
2781 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2783 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2784 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2786 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2788 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2789 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2791 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2792 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2793 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2794 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2796 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2797 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2800 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2801 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2802 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2803 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2805 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2806 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2807 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2808 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2810 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2811 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2813 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2815 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2816 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2817 reporting incorrect results.
2821 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2822 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2824 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2827 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2829 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2830 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2832 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2833 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2835 'pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to 'pr -N' when also using
2838 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2839 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2840 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2841 the file name does not look like a page range.
2843 printf has several changes:
2845 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2846 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2848 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2849 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2850 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2852 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2853 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2856 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2857 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2859 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2860 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2862 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2864 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2865 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2867 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2869 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2871 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2872 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2873 when first encountering the directory.
2877 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2878 output; POSIX requires this.
2880 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2881 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2883 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2885 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2886 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2888 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2889 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2891 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2892 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2893 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2894 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2895 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2896 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2897 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2899 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2900 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2901 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2903 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2904 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2906 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2908 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2910 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2911 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2912 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2913 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2915 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2919 For efficiency, 'sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2920 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2921 some relatively-contrived examples like 'cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2922 are no longer safe, as 'sort' might start writing F before 'cat' is
2923 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless '-m' is used.
2925 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2926 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2927 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2929 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2930 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2932 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2933 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2935 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2936 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2937 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2938 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2939 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2941 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2942 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2944 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2945 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2947 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2949 nocreat do not create the output file
2950 excl fail if the output file already exists
2951 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2952 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2954 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2956 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2957 direct use direct I/O for data
2958 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2959 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2960 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2961 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2962 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2964 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2966 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2967 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append '\n' to the format
2970 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2971 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2972 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2973 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2974 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2975 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2977 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2978 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2980 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2983 Dates like 'January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2985 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2987 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2988 prefixed by '@'. For example, '@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2990 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2991 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2992 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2994 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2995 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2996 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2998 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
3000 'date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
3001 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
3003 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
3004 for compatibility with bash.
3006 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
3008 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
3009 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
3010 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
3011 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
3013 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
3014 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
3016 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
3017 ls supports TABSIZE.
3018 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
3019 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
3020 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
3022 The usual '--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
3025 'od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
3027 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
3028 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
3029 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
3030 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
3031 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
3032 an offset, not as a file name.
3034 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
3035 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
3037 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
3038 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
3040 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
3041 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
3043 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
3044 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
3045 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
3047 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
3048 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
3050 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
3051 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
3055 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
3057 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
3059 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
3063 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
3064 or more arguments between partitions.
3066 'cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
3067 holes in the destination.
3069 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
3070 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
3071 this change, if you ran 'ssh localhost', then 'nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
3072 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
3073 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
3074 terminates immediately.
3076 'expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
3078 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
3080 The '|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
3081 arguments are null or zero. E.g., 'expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
3082 not the empty string.
3084 The '|' and '&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
3085 'expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
3089 'chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
3090 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
3091 containing '.' that happens to equal 'user.group'.
3094 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
3101 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
3105 'cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
3106 declare stat and lstat as 'static inline' functions.
3108 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
3109 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
3111 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
3112 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
3113 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
3116 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
3120 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
3121 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
3123 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
3124 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
3126 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
3127 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
3128 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
3130 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
3132 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
3135 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
3137 ** Configuration option
3139 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
3140 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
3144 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
3145 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
3149 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
3150 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
3151 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
3154 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
3155 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
3156 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
3157 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
3158 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
3159 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3160 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3163 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
3167 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
3168 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
3169 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
3171 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
3172 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
3174 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
3176 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
3177 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
3178 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
3179 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
3181 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
3183 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
3184 not just the ones that reference directories
3186 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
3187 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
3189 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
3190 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
3191 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
3193 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
3194 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
3195 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
3196 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
3197 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
3198 ragged when a datum was too wide.
3200 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
3205 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
3206 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
3208 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
3210 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
3212 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
3214 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
3215 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
3217 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
3218 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
3220 dd 'unblock' and 'sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
3222 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
3226 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
3228 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
3230 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
3231 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
3232 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
3233 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
3234 resolution is the best we can do right now.
3236 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
3237 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
3239 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
3240 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
3242 'sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
3243 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
3245 who -l now means 'who --login', not 'who --lookup', per POSIX.
3246 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
3247 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
3251 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via 'mv B b' when 'B' is
3252 the same directory entry as 'b' no longer destroys the directory entry
3253 referenced by both 'b' and 'B'. Note that this would happen only on
3254 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
3255 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
3256 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
3257 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
3258 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
3259 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
3260 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
3261 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
3262 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
3263 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
3264 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
3266 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in '%'
3268 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
3269 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
3271 'split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
3273 'df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
3275 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
3276 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
3278 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
3280 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
3281 without a trailing newline.
3283 'tail -n0 -f FILE' and 'tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
3284 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
3286 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
3289 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
3293 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
3295 'test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
3297 'test -t', 'test --help', and 'test --version' now silently exit
3298 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
3299 'test -t 1'. To get help and version info for 'test', use
3300 '[ --help' and '[ --version'.
3302 'test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
3304 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
3305 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
3306 be printed without leading spaces.
3308 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
3309 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
3314 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
3315 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
3316 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
3318 '[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
3320 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
3321 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
3323 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
3324 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
3326 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
3327 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
3329 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
3331 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
3333 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
3335 'sort --version' and 'sort --help' fail, as they should
3336 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
3338 'su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
3340 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3342 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
3343 byte offsets are specified.
3346 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
3349 - new program: '[' (much like 'test')
3352 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
3353 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
3354 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
3355 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
3356 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
3357 - chown: '.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
3358 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
3359 on such a system, then it still accepts '.', by default. If chown
3360 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
3361 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3362 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
3363 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
3364 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
3365 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
3366 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
3367 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
3368 directory where M has write access.
3369 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
3370 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
3371 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
3374 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
3375 - 'du /' once again prints the '/' on the last line
3376 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
3377 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
3378 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
3379 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted 'file truncated' warning.
3380 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
3381 - df and 'readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
3382 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
3383 - 'env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
3384 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
3385 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
3386 - mv now removes 'a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
3387 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
3388 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
3389 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
3390 - date's '-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
3391 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
3392 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like '-72x'
3393 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
3394 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
3395 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
3396 appeared one additional time.
3398 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3399 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
3400 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
3401 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
3404 - 'kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than '?') on systems
3405 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
3406 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
3407 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
3408 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
3409 Before 'rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
3410 if there were more than 338.
3412 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
3413 - false --help now exits nonzero
3416 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
3417 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
3418 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
3419 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
3422 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
3423 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of '0'
3424 * seq now accepts " " and "'" as valid format flag characters
3425 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
3426 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3429 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3430 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3431 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3432 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to "infinite" recursion
3433 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3434 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3435 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3438 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3439 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3440 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3441 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3442 * 'df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3443 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3445 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3446 under certain unusual conditions
3447 * mv and 'cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3448 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3451 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3452 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3453 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3454 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3455 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3456 * df now always displays under 'Filesystem', the device file name
3457 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3458 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3459 'df /dev/hda' would list '/dev/hda' as the 'Filesystem', rather than say
3460 /dev/hda3 (the device on which '/' is mounted), as it does now.
3461 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3462 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3463 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3464 'test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3465 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3466 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3469 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3470 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3473 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3474 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3475 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3476 involving hard-linked directories
3477 * 'who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3478 * df now displays a mount point (usually '/') for non-mounted
3479 character-special and block files
3482 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3483 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3484 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3485 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3486 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3487 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3488 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3489 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3490 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3492 * ls dangling-symlink now prints 'dangling-symlink'.
3493 Before, it would fail with 'no such file or directory'.
3494 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3495 attributes of 'symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3496 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3497 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3498 specified on the command line.
3499 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3500 Before, 'shred --zero file' would produce 'shred: missing file argument',
3501 and worse, 'shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3502 the first file untouched.
3503 * readlink: new program
3504 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3505 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3506 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3507 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3508 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3509 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3512 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3513 * 'ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3514 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3515 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3516 * 'du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3517 * 'du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3518 * In the unlikely event that running 'du /' resulted in 'stat ("/", ...)'
3519 failing, du would give a diagnostic about '' (empty string) rather than '/'.
3520 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3521 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3522 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3523 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3525 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3526 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3527 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3529 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3530 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3531 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3532 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3533 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3534 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3535 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3536 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this 'yes|nl -s%n'
3539 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3540 * 'ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3543 * 'rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3544 * 'tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3545 * 'mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3546 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3547 * printf now honors the '--' command line delimiter
3548 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3549 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3552 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3553 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3555 ========================================================================
3556 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3557 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3560 * 'rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3562 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3563 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3564 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3565 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3566 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3567 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3568 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3569 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 through 4.1.9.
3570 * 'rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3571 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3572 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3573 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3575 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3576 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3577 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3578 * 'touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3580 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3583 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3585 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3586 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3587 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3588 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3589 * The obsolete usage 'touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3590 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3591 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3594 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3595 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3596 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3597 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3598 A missing 'B' (e.g. '1M') has the same meaning as before.
3599 A trailing 'B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3600 The nonstandard 'D' suffix (e.g. '1MD') is now obsolescent.
3601 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3602 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3603 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3604 * You can omit an integer '1' before a block size suffix,
3605 e.g. 'df -BG' is equivalent to 'df -B 1G' and to 'df --block-size=1G'.
3606 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3607 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3608 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3609 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3611 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3612 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3614 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3615 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3616 * dd once again uses 'lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3617 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3618 resort to emulating 'skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3619 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3621 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3622 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3623 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3624 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3625 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3626 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., 'chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3627 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3629 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3630 the source files in the following example:
3631 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3632 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3633 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3634 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3635 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3636 links between source files with --preserve=links
3637 * cp accepts new options:
3638 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3639 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3640 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3641 to '--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3642 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3643 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3644 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3645 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off '-i'.
3646 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3648 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3649 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3650 * mv: fix the bug whereby 'mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3651 even though it's older than dest.
3652 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3653 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3654 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3655 * 'ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3656 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3658 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3659 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3660 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3661 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3662 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3663 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3664 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3666 - The 'full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3667 '2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3668 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3670 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3671 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3672 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3673 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3674 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3675 This is the default.
3677 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3678 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3679 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3680 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3681 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3683 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3686 ========================================================================
3687 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3688 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3691 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3692 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3694 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3695 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3696 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3697 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3698 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3700 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3701 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3702 that specifies a non-directory
3705 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3706 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3707 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3708 the long option '--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3709 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3710 - 'date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'date --iso-8601'.
3711 - 'nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'nice -n NUM'.
3712 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3713 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3714 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3715 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3716 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3717 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3718 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3719 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3720 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3721 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3722 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3723 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3724 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3725 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3726 This problem arose only with relative date strings like 'last monday'.
3727 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3728 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3730 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3731 * 'date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3732 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3734 * 'date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3736 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3737 'write error' when invoked with the --version option
3739 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3740 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3741 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3742 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the 'C' locale
3743 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3745 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3746 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3747 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3748 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3749 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3751 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3753 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3754 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3755 * still more portability fixes
3756 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3757 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3759 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3761 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3763 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3765 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3766 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3767 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3768 there is any time remaining
3769 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3771 ========================================================================
3772 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3773 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3775 This package began as the union of the following:
3776 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3778 ========================================================================
3780 Copyright (C) 2001-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3782 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3783 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3784 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3785 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3786 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the "GNU Free
3787 Documentation License" file as part of this distribution.