1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
10 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
12 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
13 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
14 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
16 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
17 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
20 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
24 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
25 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
27 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
28 support but with insufficient /proc support.
30 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
31 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
33 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
34 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
35 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
36 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
37 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
38 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
40 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
41 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
44 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
45 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
47 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
50 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
51 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
52 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
54 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
55 directory is unreadable.
57 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
58 Before it would print nothing.
60 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
64 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
65 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
66 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
68 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
69 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
70 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
71 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
74 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
78 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
79 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
80 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
81 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
82 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
83 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
84 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
86 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
87 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
88 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
89 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
90 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
91 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
92 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
93 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
95 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
96 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
97 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
100 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
104 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
105 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
107 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
108 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
109 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
111 ** Improved robustness
113 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
114 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
115 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
118 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
122 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
123 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
124 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
125 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
126 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
128 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
132 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
135 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
139 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
140 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
141 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
142 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
144 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
145 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
147 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
148 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
149 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
152 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
154 ** Improved robustness
156 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
157 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
159 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
160 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
161 or NFS-mounted partition.
163 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
164 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
168 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
169 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
170 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
171 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
172 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
173 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
175 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
176 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
178 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
179 or neglect to report file removal.
181 For the "groups" command:
183 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
184 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
186 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
188 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
190 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
194 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
195 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
198 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
200 ** Changes in behavior
202 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
203 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
204 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
205 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
207 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
208 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
209 a final `./' or `../' component.
211 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
212 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
215 ** Infrastructure changes
217 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
218 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
219 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
220 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
224 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
227 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
228 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
229 dirent.d_type support.
231 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
232 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
234 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
235 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
236 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
237 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
240 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
242 ** Changes in behavior
244 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
248 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
249 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
253 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
254 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
255 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
257 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
258 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
260 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
261 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
263 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
265 ** Improved robustness
267 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
268 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
269 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
271 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
272 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
275 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
276 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
278 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
279 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
281 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
282 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
284 ** Changes in behavior
286 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
287 where the two are distinct.
289 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
290 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
291 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
292 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
293 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
294 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
295 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
296 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
297 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
298 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
299 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
300 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
301 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
302 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
303 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
304 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
305 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
307 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
308 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
309 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
311 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
312 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
313 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
314 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
317 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
318 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
322 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
323 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
324 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
325 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
327 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
328 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
329 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
331 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
332 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
333 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
334 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
335 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
338 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
339 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
341 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
342 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
343 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
344 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
346 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
347 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
348 successful and the output is easier to parse.
350 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
351 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
352 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
353 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
355 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
356 and sticky) with the -m option.
358 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
359 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
360 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
361 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
362 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
364 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
365 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
367 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
371 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
372 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
373 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
374 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
376 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
378 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
380 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
381 silently ignoring one of them.
383 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
384 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
385 containing this change was 5.92.
387 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
388 automatically newline terminated.
390 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
391 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
392 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
393 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
396 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
397 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
398 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
401 ** Scheduled for removal
403 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
404 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
406 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
407 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
408 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
409 command to unlink a directory.
411 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
412 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
413 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
414 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
418 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
419 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
420 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
421 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
422 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
423 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
427 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
428 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
430 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
432 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
433 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
434 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
436 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
437 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
440 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
441 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
443 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
444 list directories before files.
446 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
447 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
448 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
449 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
452 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
454 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
456 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
457 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
458 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
460 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
461 list of NUL-terminated file names.
465 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
466 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
467 usually printing nothing.
469 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
471 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
472 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
473 them with hard-linked directories.
475 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
476 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
477 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
479 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
480 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
481 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
483 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
486 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
487 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
489 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
490 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
492 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
493 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
495 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
496 all command-line arguments.
498 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
500 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
502 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
503 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
505 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
507 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
508 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
509 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
510 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
511 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
513 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
514 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
516 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
517 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
518 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
519 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
521 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
523 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
527 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
528 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
530 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
531 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
533 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
534 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
536 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
537 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
539 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
540 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
542 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
544 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
545 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
546 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
549 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
551 ** Build-related bug fixes
553 installing .mo files would fail
556 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
560 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
562 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
565 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
569 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
570 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
574 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
576 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
577 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
579 ** Deprecated options
581 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
582 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
584 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
588 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
590 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
591 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
592 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
593 conforming to older POSIX versions.
595 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
598 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
604 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
609 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
611 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
613 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
614 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
615 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
617 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
618 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
619 problematic usages. These include:
621 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
622 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
623 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
624 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
625 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
626 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
627 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
628 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
629 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
631 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
632 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
634 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
635 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
636 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
637 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
639 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
640 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
641 between binary and text files.
643 The following programs now always use text input/output:
647 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
651 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
652 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
655 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
657 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
658 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
660 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
661 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
662 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
664 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
666 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
668 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
669 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
670 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
674 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
676 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
677 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
679 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
680 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
681 blocks until F contains N blocks.
685 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
686 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
690 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
691 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
692 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
696 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
697 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
701 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
703 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
705 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
709 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
710 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
711 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
713 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
714 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
715 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
716 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
717 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
719 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
723 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
724 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
725 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
727 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
729 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
730 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
731 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
732 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
734 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
736 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
737 rather than silently wrapping around.
739 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
740 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
742 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
743 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
745 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
746 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
747 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
750 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
752 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
754 ** Improved robustness
756 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
757 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
758 no matter how large the result.
760 ** Improved portability
762 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
763 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
765 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
767 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
768 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
769 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
771 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
772 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
776 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
777 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
779 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
781 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
782 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
783 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
784 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
786 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
787 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
789 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
790 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
791 categories if not specified by dircolors.
793 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
795 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
796 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
798 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
799 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
801 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
803 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
804 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
806 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
807 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
809 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
810 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
811 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
813 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
815 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
817 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
821 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
823 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
824 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
825 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
827 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
828 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
830 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
831 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
832 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
834 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
835 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
837 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
838 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
839 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
840 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
842 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
843 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
845 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
846 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
847 the file system does not support it.
849 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
851 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
852 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
854 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
856 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
857 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
859 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
860 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
861 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
862 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
864 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
865 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
868 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
869 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
870 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
871 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
873 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
874 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
875 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
876 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
878 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
879 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
881 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
883 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
884 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
885 reporting incorrect results.
889 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
890 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
892 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
895 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
897 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
898 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
900 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
901 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
903 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
906 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
907 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
908 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
909 the file name does not look like a page range.
911 printf has several changes:
913 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
914 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
916 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
917 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
918 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
920 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
921 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
924 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
925 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
927 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
928 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
930 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
932 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
933 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
935 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
937 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
939 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
940 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
941 when first encountering the directory.
945 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
946 output; POSIX requires this.
948 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
949 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
951 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
953 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
954 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
956 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
957 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
959 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
960 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
961 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
962 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
963 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
964 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
965 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
967 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
968 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
969 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
971 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
972 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
974 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
976 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
978 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
979 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
980 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
981 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
983 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
987 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
988 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
989 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
990 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
991 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
993 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
994 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
995 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
997 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
998 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1000 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1001 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1003 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1004 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1005 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1006 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1007 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1009 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1010 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1012 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1013 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1015 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1017 nocreat do not create the output file
1018 excl fail if the output file already exists
1019 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1020 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1022 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1024 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1025 direct use direct I/O for data
1026 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1027 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1028 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1029 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1030 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1032 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1034 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1035 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1038 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1039 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1040 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1041 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1042 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1043 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1045 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1046 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1048 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1051 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1053 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1055 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1056 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1058 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1059 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1060 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1062 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1063 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1064 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1066 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1068 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1069 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1071 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1072 for compatibility with bash.
1074 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1076 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1077 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1078 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1079 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1081 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1082 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1084 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1085 ls supports TABSIZE.
1086 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1087 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1088 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1090 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1093 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1095 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1096 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1097 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1098 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1099 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1100 an offset, not as a file name.
1102 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1103 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1105 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1106 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1108 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1109 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1111 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1112 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1113 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1115 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1116 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1118 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1119 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1123 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1125 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1127 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1131 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1132 or more arguments between partitions.
1134 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1135 holes in the destination.
1137 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1138 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1139 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1140 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1141 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1142 terminates immediately.
1144 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1146 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1148 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1149 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1150 not the empty string.
1152 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1153 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1157 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1158 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1159 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1162 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1169 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1173 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1174 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1176 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1177 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1179 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1180 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1181 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1184 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1188 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1189 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1191 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1192 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1194 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1195 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1196 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1198 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1200 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1203 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1205 ** Configuration option
1207 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1208 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1212 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1213 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1217 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1218 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1219 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1222 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1223 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1224 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1225 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1226 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1227 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1228 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1231 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1235 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1236 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1237 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1239 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1240 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1242 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1244 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1245 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1246 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1247 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1249 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1251 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1252 not just the ones that reference directories
1254 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1255 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1257 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1258 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1259 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1261 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1262 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1263 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1264 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1265 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1266 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1268 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1273 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1274 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1276 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1278 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1280 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1282 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1283 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1285 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1286 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1288 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1290 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1294 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1296 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1298 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1299 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1300 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1301 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1302 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1304 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1305 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1307 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1308 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1310 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1311 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1313 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1314 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1315 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1319 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1320 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1321 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1322 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1323 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1324 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1325 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1326 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1327 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1328 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1329 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1330 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1331 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1332 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1334 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1336 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1337 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1339 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1341 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1343 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1344 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1346 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1348 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1349 without a trailing newline.
1351 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1352 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1354 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1357 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1361 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1363 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1365 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1366 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1367 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1368 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1370 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1372 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1373 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1374 be printed without leading spaces.
1376 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1377 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1382 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1383 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1384 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1386 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1388 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1389 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1391 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1392 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1394 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1395 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1397 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1399 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1401 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1403 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1404 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1406 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1408 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1410 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1411 byte offsets are specified.
1414 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1417 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1420 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1421 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1422 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1423 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1424 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1425 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1426 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1427 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1428 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1429 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1430 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1431 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1432 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1433 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1434 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1435 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1436 directory where M has write access.
1437 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1438 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1439 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1442 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1443 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1444 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1445 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1446 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1447 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1448 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1449 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1450 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1451 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1452 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1453 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1454 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1455 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1456 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1457 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1458 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1459 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1460 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1461 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1462 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1463 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1464 appeared one additional time.
1466 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1467 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1468 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1469 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1472 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1473 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1474 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1475 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1476 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1477 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1478 if there were more than 338.
1480 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1481 - false --help now exits nonzero
1484 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1485 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1486 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1487 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1490 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1491 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1492 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1493 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1494 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1497 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1498 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1499 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1500 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1501 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1502 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1503 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1506 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1507 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1508 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1509 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1510 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1511 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1513 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1514 under certain unusual conditions
1515 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1516 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1519 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1520 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1521 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1522 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1523 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1524 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1525 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1526 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1527 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1528 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1529 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1530 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1531 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1532 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1533 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1534 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1537 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1538 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1541 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1542 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1543 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1544 involving hard-linked directories
1545 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1546 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1547 character-special and block files
1550 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1551 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1552 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1553 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1554 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1555 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1556 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1557 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1558 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1560 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1561 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1562 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1563 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1564 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1565 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1566 specified on the command line.
1567 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1568 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1569 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1570 the first file untouched.
1571 * readlink: new program
1572 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1573 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1574 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1575 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1576 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1577 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1580 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1581 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1582 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1583 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1584 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1585 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1586 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1587 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1588 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1589 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1590 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1591 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1593 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1594 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1595 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1597 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1598 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1599 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1600 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1601 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1602 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1603 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1604 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1607 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1608 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1611 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1612 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1613 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1614 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1615 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1616 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1617 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1620 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1621 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1623 ========================================================================
1624 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1625 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1628 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1630 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1631 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1632 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1633 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1634 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1635 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1636 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1637 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1638 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1639 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1640 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1641 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1643 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1644 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1645 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1646 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1648 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1651 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1653 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1654 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1655 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1656 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1657 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1658 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1659 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1662 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1663 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1664 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1665 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1666 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1667 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1668 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1669 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1670 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1671 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1672 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1673 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1674 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1675 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1676 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1677 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1679 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1680 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1682 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1683 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1684 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1685 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1686 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1687 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1689 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1690 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1691 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1692 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1693 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1694 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1695 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1697 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1698 the source files in the following example:
1699 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1700 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1701 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1702 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1703 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1704 links between source files with --preserve=links
1705 * cp accepts new options:
1706 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1707 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1708 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1709 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1710 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1711 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1712 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1713 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1714 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1716 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1717 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1718 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1719 even though it's older than dest.
1720 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1721 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1722 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1723 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1724 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1726 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1727 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1728 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1729 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1730 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1731 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1732 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1734 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1735 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1736 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1738 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1739 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1740 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1741 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1742 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1743 This is the default.
1745 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1746 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1747 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1748 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1749 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1751 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1754 ========================================================================
1755 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1756 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1759 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1760 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1762 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1763 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1764 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1765 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1766 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1768 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1769 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1770 that specifies a non-directory
1773 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1774 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1775 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1776 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1777 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1778 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1779 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1780 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1781 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1782 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1783 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1784 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1785 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1786 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1787 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1788 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1789 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1790 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1791 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1792 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1793 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1794 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1795 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1796 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1798 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1799 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1800 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1802 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1804 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1805 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1807 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1808 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1809 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1810 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1811 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1813 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1814 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1815 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1816 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1817 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1819 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1821 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1822 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1823 * still more portability fixes
1824 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1825 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1827 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1829 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1831 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1833 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1834 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1835 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1836 there is any time remaining
1837 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1839 ========================================================================
1840 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1841 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1843 This package began as the union of the following:
1844 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1846 ========================================================================
1848 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1851 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1852 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1853 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1854 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1855 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1856 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.