1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
12 ** Programs no longer installed by default
16 ** Changes in behavior
18 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
19 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
21 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
22 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
24 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
25 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
26 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
30 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
32 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
33 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
34 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
36 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
37 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
38 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
43 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
44 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
45 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
46 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
48 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
49 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
50 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
51 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
52 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
53 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
56 ** Remove deprecated options
58 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
59 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
60 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
61 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
62 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
64 ** Improved robustness
66 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
67 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
68 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
69 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
70 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
71 loss of the contents of a/f.
73 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
74 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
78 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
79 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
80 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
82 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
83 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
84 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
85 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
87 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
88 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
89 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
90 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
91 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
92 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
93 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
94 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
95 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
96 the destination is a symlink.
98 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
100 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
101 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
103 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
104 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
106 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
108 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
109 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
111 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
112 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
114 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
117 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
118 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
120 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
121 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
123 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
124 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
125 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
126 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
128 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
129 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
130 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
132 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
133 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
134 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
136 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
137 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
138 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
139 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
141 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
142 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
143 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
145 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
146 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
148 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
149 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
151 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
153 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
154 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
155 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
157 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
158 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
160 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
161 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
163 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
164 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
166 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
167 [present in the original version]
170 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
174 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
176 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
177 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
178 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
180 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
181 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
183 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
187 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
188 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
190 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
191 support but with insufficient /proc support.
193 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
194 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
196 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
197 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
198 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
199 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
200 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
201 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
203 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
204 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
207 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
208 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
210 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
213 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
214 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
215 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
217 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
218 directory is unreadable.
220 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
221 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
222 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
224 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
225 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
226 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
227 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
228 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
231 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
232 Before it would print nothing.
234 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
236 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
237 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
238 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
239 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
240 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
241 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
242 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
243 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
245 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
249 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
250 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
251 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
253 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
254 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
255 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
256 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
259 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
263 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
264 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
265 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
266 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
267 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
268 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
269 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
271 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
272 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
273 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
274 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
275 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
276 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
277 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
278 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
280 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
281 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
282 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
285 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
289 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
290 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
292 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
293 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
294 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
296 ** Improved robustness
298 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
299 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
300 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
303 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
307 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
308 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
309 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
310 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
311 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
313 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
317 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
320 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
324 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
325 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
326 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
327 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
329 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
330 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
332 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
333 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
334 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
337 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
339 ** Improved robustness
341 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
342 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
344 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
345 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
346 or NFS-mounted partition.
348 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
349 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
353 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
354 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
355 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
356 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
357 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
358 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
360 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
361 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
363 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
364 or neglect to report file removal.
366 For the "groups" command:
368 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
369 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
371 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
373 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
375 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
379 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
380 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
383 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
385 ** Changes in behavior
387 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
388 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
389 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
390 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
392 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
393 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
394 a final `./' or `../' component.
396 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
397 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
400 ** Infrastructure changes
402 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
403 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
404 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
405 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
409 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
412 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
413 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
414 dirent.d_type support.
416 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
417 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
419 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
420 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
421 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
422 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
425 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
427 ** Changes in behavior
429 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
433 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
434 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
438 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
439 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
440 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
442 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
443 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
445 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
446 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
448 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
450 ** Improved robustness
452 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
453 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
454 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
456 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
457 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
460 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
461 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
463 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
464 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
466 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
467 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
469 ** Changes in behavior
471 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
472 where the two are distinct.
474 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
475 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
476 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
477 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
478 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
479 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
480 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
481 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
482 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
483 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
484 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
485 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
486 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
487 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
488 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
489 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
490 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
492 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
493 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
494 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
496 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
497 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
498 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
499 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
502 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
503 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
507 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
508 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
509 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
510 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
512 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
513 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
514 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
516 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
517 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
518 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
519 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
520 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
523 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
524 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
526 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
527 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
528 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
529 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
531 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
532 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
533 successful and the output is easier to parse.
535 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
536 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
537 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
538 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
540 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
541 and sticky) with the -m option.
543 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
544 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
545 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
546 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
547 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
549 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
550 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
552 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
556 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
557 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
558 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
559 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
561 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
563 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
565 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
566 silently ignoring one of them.
568 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
569 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
570 containing this change was 5.92.
572 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
573 automatically newline terminated.
575 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
576 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
577 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
578 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
581 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
582 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
583 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
586 ** Scheduled for removal
588 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
589 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
591 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
592 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
593 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
594 command to unlink a directory.
596 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
597 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
598 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
599 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
603 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
604 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
605 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
606 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
607 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
608 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
612 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
613 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
615 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
617 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
618 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
619 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
621 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
622 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
625 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
626 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
628 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
629 list directories before files.
631 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
632 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
633 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
634 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
637 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
639 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
641 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
642 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
643 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
645 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
646 list of NUL-terminated file names.
650 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
651 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
652 usually printing nothing.
654 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
656 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
657 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
658 them with hard-linked directories.
660 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
661 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
662 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
664 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
665 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
666 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
668 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
671 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
672 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
674 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
675 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
677 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
678 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
680 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
681 all command-line arguments.
683 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
685 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
687 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
688 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
690 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
692 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
693 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
694 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
695 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
696 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
698 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
699 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
701 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
702 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
703 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
704 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
706 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
708 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
712 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
713 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
715 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
716 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
718 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
719 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
721 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
722 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
724 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
725 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
727 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
729 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
730 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
731 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
734 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
736 ** Build-related bug fixes
738 installing .mo files would fail
741 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
745 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
747 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
750 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
754 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
755 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
759 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
761 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
762 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
764 ** Deprecated options
766 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
767 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
769 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
773 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
775 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
776 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
777 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
778 conforming to older POSIX versions.
780 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
783 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
789 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
794 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
796 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
798 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
799 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
800 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
802 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
803 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
804 problematic usages. These include:
806 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
807 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
808 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
809 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
810 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
811 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
812 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
813 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
814 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
816 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
817 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
819 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
820 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
821 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
822 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
824 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
825 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
826 between binary and text files.
828 The following programs now always use text input/output:
832 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
836 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
837 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
840 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
842 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
843 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
845 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
846 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
847 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
849 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
851 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
853 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
854 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
855 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
859 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
861 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
862 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
864 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
865 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
866 blocks until F contains N blocks.
870 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
871 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
875 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
876 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
877 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
881 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
882 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
886 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
888 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
890 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
894 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
895 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
896 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
898 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
899 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
900 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
901 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
902 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
904 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
908 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
909 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
910 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
912 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
914 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
915 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
916 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
917 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
919 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
921 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
922 rather than silently wrapping around.
924 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
925 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
927 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
928 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
930 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
931 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
932 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
935 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
937 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
939 ** Improved robustness
941 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
942 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
943 no matter how large the result.
945 ** Improved portability
947 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
948 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
950 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
952 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
953 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
954 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
956 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
957 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
961 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
962 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
964 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
966 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
967 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
968 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
969 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
971 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
972 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
974 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
975 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
976 categories if not specified by dircolors.
978 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
980 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
981 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
983 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
984 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
986 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
988 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
989 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
991 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
992 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
994 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
995 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
996 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
998 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1000 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1002 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1006 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1008 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1009 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1010 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1012 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1013 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1015 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1016 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1017 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1019 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1020 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1022 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1023 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1024 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1025 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1027 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1028 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1030 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1031 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1032 the file system does not support it.
1034 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1036 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1037 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1039 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1041 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1042 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1044 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1045 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1046 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1047 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1049 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1050 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1053 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1054 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1055 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1056 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1058 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1059 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1060 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1061 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1063 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1064 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1066 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1068 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1069 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1070 reporting incorrect results.
1074 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1075 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1077 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1080 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1082 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1083 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1085 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1086 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1088 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1091 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1092 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1093 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1094 the file name does not look like a page range.
1096 printf has several changes:
1098 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1099 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1101 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1102 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1103 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1105 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1106 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1109 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1110 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1112 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1113 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1115 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1117 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1118 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1120 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1122 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1124 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1125 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1126 when first encountering the directory.
1130 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1131 output; POSIX requires this.
1133 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1134 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1136 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1138 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1139 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1141 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1142 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1144 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1145 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1146 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1147 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1148 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1149 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1150 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1152 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1153 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1154 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1156 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1157 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1159 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1161 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1163 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1164 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1165 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1166 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1168 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1172 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1173 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1174 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1175 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1176 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1178 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1179 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1180 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1182 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1183 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1185 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1186 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1188 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1189 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1190 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1191 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1192 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1194 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1195 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1197 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1198 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1200 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1202 nocreat do not create the output file
1203 excl fail if the output file already exists
1204 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1205 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1207 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1209 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1210 direct use direct I/O for data
1211 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1212 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1213 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1214 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1215 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1217 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1219 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1220 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1223 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1224 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1225 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1226 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1227 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1228 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1230 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1231 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1233 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1236 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1238 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1240 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1241 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1243 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1244 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1245 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1247 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1248 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1249 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1251 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1253 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1254 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1256 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1257 for compatibility with bash.
1259 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1261 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1262 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1263 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1264 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1266 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1267 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1269 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1270 ls supports TABSIZE.
1271 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1272 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1273 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1275 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1278 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1280 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1281 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1282 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1283 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1284 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1285 an offset, not as a file name.
1287 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1288 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1290 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1291 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1293 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1294 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1296 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1297 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1298 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1300 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1301 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1303 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1304 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1308 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1310 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1312 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1316 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1317 or more arguments between partitions.
1319 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1320 holes in the destination.
1322 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1323 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1324 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1325 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1326 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1327 terminates immediately.
1329 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1331 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1333 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1334 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1335 not the empty string.
1337 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1338 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1342 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1343 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1344 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1347 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1354 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1358 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1359 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1361 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1362 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1364 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1365 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1366 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1369 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1373 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1374 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1376 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1377 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1379 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1380 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1381 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1383 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1385 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1388 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1390 ** Configuration option
1392 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1393 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1397 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1398 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1402 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1403 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1404 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1407 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1408 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1409 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1410 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1411 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1412 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1413 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1416 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1420 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1421 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1422 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1424 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1425 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1427 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1429 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1430 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1431 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1432 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1434 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1436 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1437 not just the ones that reference directories
1439 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1440 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1442 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1443 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1444 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1446 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1447 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1448 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1449 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1450 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1451 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1453 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1458 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1459 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1461 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1463 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1465 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1467 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1468 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1470 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1471 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1473 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1475 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1479 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1481 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1483 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1484 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1485 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1486 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1487 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1489 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1490 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1492 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1493 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1495 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1496 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1498 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1499 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1500 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1504 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1505 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1506 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1507 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1508 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1509 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1510 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1511 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1512 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1513 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1514 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1515 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1516 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1517 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1519 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1521 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1522 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1524 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1526 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1528 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1529 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1531 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1533 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1534 without a trailing newline.
1536 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1537 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1539 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1542 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1546 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1548 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1550 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1551 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1552 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1553 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1555 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1557 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1558 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1559 be printed without leading spaces.
1561 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1562 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1567 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1568 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1569 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1571 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1573 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1574 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1576 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1577 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1579 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1580 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1582 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1584 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1586 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1588 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1589 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1591 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1593 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1595 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1596 byte offsets are specified.
1599 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1602 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1605 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1606 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1607 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1608 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1609 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1610 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1611 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1612 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1613 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1614 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1615 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1616 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1617 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1618 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1619 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1620 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1621 directory where M has write access.
1622 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1623 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1624 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1627 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1628 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1629 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1630 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1631 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1632 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1633 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1634 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1635 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1636 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1637 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1638 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1639 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1640 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1641 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1642 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1643 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1644 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1645 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1646 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1647 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1648 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1649 appeared one additional time.
1651 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1652 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1653 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1654 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1657 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1658 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1659 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1660 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1661 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1662 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1663 if there were more than 338.
1665 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1666 - false --help now exits nonzero
1669 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1670 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1671 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1672 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1675 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1676 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1677 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1678 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1679 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1682 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1683 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1684 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1685 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1686 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1687 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1688 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1691 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1692 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1693 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1694 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1695 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1696 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1698 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1699 under certain unusual conditions
1700 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1701 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1704 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1705 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1706 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1707 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1708 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1709 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1710 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1711 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1712 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1713 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1714 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1715 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1716 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1717 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1718 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1719 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1722 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1723 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1726 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1727 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1728 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1729 involving hard-linked directories
1730 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1731 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1732 character-special and block files
1735 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1736 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1737 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1738 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1739 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1740 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1741 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1742 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1743 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1745 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1746 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1747 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1748 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1749 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1750 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1751 specified on the command line.
1752 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1753 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1754 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1755 the first file untouched.
1756 * readlink: new program
1757 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1758 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1759 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1760 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1761 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1762 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1765 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1766 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1767 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1768 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1769 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1770 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1771 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1772 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1773 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1774 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1775 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1776 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1778 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1779 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1780 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1782 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1783 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1784 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1785 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1786 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1787 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1788 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1789 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1792 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1793 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1796 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1797 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1798 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1799 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1800 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1801 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1802 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1805 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1806 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1808 ========================================================================
1809 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1810 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1813 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1815 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1816 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1817 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1818 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1819 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1820 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1821 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1822 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1823 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1824 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1825 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1826 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1828 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1829 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1830 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1831 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1833 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1836 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1838 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1839 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1840 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1841 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1842 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1843 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1844 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1847 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1848 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1849 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1850 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1851 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1852 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1853 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1854 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1855 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1856 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1857 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1858 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1859 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1860 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1861 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1862 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1864 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1865 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1867 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1868 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1869 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1870 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1871 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1872 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1874 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1875 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1876 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1877 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1878 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1879 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1880 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1882 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1883 the source files in the following example:
1884 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1885 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1886 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1887 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1888 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1889 links between source files with --preserve=links
1890 * cp accepts new options:
1891 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1892 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1893 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1894 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1895 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1896 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1897 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1898 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1899 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1901 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1902 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1903 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1904 even though it's older than dest.
1905 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1906 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1907 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1908 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1909 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1911 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1912 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1913 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1914 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1915 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1916 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1917 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1919 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1920 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1921 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1923 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1924 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1925 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1926 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1927 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1928 This is the default.
1930 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1931 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1932 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1933 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1934 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1936 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1939 ========================================================================
1940 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1941 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1944 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1945 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1947 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1948 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1949 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1950 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1951 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1953 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1954 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1955 that specifies a non-directory
1958 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1959 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1960 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1961 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1962 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1963 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1964 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1965 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1966 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1967 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1968 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1969 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1970 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1971 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1972 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1973 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1974 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1975 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1976 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1977 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1978 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1979 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1980 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1981 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1983 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1984 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1985 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1987 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1989 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1990 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1992 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1993 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1994 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1995 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1996 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1998 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1999 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2000 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2001 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2002 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2004 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2006 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2007 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2008 * still more portability fixes
2009 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2010 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2012 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2014 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2016 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2018 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2019 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2020 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2021 there is any time remaining
2022 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2024 ========================================================================
2025 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2026 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2028 This package began as the union of the following:
2029 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2031 ========================================================================
2033 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2036 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2037 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2038 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2039 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2040 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2041 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.