1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-17) [unstable]
7 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
8 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
10 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
12 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
14 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
16 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
17 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic points to, instead.
18 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
20 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
21 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
23 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
24 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
25 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
27 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
28 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
30 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
31 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
32 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
33 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
35 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
36 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
37 the file system does not support it.
39 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
41 For some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
42 when first encountering a directory, `rm -r' would mistakenly fail
43 to remove files under that directory.
45 If d/x is a directory and x a file, "ln x d/" now reports an error
46 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
48 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
49 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
51 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
52 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
54 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1
56 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
57 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
58 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
59 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
61 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
65 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
66 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
67 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
68 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
69 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
71 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
72 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
73 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
75 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
76 is longer than PATH_MAX.
78 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory option.
80 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
81 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
82 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
83 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
84 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
86 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
88 nocreat do not create the output file
89 excl fail if the output file already exists
90 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
91 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
93 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
95 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
96 direct use direct I/O for data
97 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
98 sync likewise, but also for metadata
99 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
100 nofollow do not follow symlinks
102 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
104 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
105 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
108 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
109 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
110 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
111 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
112 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
113 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
115 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
116 list of NUL-terminated file names.
118 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
119 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
120 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
122 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
123 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
125 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
126 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
128 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
129 for compatibility with bash.
131 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
132 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
134 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
136 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
137 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
138 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
140 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
143 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
147 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
148 or more arguments between partitions.
150 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
151 holes in the destination.
153 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
154 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
155 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
156 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
157 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
158 terminates immediately.
160 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
162 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
164 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
165 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
166 not the empty string.
168 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
169 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
173 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
174 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
175 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
178 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
185 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
189 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
190 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
192 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
193 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
195 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
196 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
197 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
200 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
204 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
205 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
207 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
208 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
210 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
211 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
212 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
214 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
216 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
219 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
221 ** Configuration option
223 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
224 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
228 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
229 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
233 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
234 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
235 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
238 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
239 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
240 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
241 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
242 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
243 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
246 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
250 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
251 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
252 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
254 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
255 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
257 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
259 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
260 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
261 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
262 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
264 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
266 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
267 not just the ones that reference directories
269 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
270 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
272 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
273 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
274 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
276 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
277 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
278 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
279 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
280 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
281 ragged when a datum was too wide.
283 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
288 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
289 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
291 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
293 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
295 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
297 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
298 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
300 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
301 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
303 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
305 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
309 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
311 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
313 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
314 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
315 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
316 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
317 resolution is the best we can do right now.
319 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
320 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
322 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
323 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
325 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
326 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
328 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
329 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
330 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
334 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
335 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
336 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
337 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
338 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
339 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
340 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
341 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
342 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
343 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
344 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
345 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
346 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
347 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
349 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
351 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
352 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
354 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
356 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
358 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
359 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
361 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
363 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
364 without a trailing newline.
366 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
367 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
369 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
372 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
376 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
378 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
380 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
381 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
382 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
383 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
385 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
387 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
388 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
389 be printed without leading spaces.
391 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
392 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
397 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
398 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
399 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
401 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
403 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
404 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
406 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
407 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
409 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
410 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
412 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
414 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
416 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
418 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
419 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
421 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
423 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
425 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
426 byte offsets are specified.
429 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
432 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
435 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
436 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
437 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
438 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
439 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
440 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
441 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
442 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
443 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
444 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
445 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
446 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
447 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
448 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
449 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
450 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
451 directory where M has write access.
452 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
453 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
454 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
457 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
458 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
459 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
460 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
461 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
462 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
463 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
464 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
465 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
466 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
467 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
468 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
469 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
470 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
471 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
472 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
473 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
474 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
475 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
476 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
477 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
478 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
479 appeared one additional time.
481 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
482 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
483 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
484 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
487 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
488 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
489 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
490 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
491 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
492 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
493 if there were more than 338.
495 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
496 - false --help now exits nonzero
499 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
500 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
501 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
502 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
505 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
506 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
507 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
508 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
509 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
512 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
513 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
514 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
515 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
516 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
517 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
518 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
521 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
522 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
523 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
524 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
525 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
526 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
528 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
529 under certain unusual conditions
530 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
531 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
534 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
535 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
536 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
537 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
538 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
539 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
540 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
541 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
542 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
543 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
544 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
545 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
546 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
547 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
548 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
549 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
552 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
553 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
556 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
557 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
558 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
559 involving hard-linked directories
560 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
561 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
562 character-special and block files
565 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
566 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
567 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
568 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
569 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
570 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
571 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
572 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
573 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
575 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
576 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
577 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
578 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
579 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
580 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
581 specified on the command line.
582 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
583 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
584 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
585 the first file untouched.
586 * readlink: new program
587 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
588 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
589 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
590 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
591 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
592 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
595 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
596 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
597 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
598 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
599 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
600 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
601 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
602 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
603 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
604 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
605 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
606 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
608 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
609 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
610 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
612 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
613 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
614 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
615 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
616 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
617 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
618 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
619 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
622 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
623 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
626 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
627 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
628 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
629 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
630 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
631 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
632 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
635 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
636 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
638 ========================================================================
639 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
640 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
643 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
645 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
646 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
647 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
648 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
649 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
650 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
651 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
652 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
653 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
654 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
655 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
656 The old options will continue to work for a while.
658 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
659 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
660 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
661 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
663 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
666 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
668 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
669 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
670 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
671 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
672 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
673 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
674 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
677 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
678 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
679 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
680 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
681 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
682 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
683 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
684 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
685 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
686 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
687 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
688 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
689 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
690 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
691 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
692 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
694 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
695 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
697 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
698 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
699 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
700 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
701 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
702 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
704 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
705 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
706 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
707 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
708 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
709 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
710 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
712 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
713 the source files in the following example:
714 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
715 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
716 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
717 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
718 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
719 links between source files with --preserve=links
720 * cp accepts new options:
721 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
722 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
723 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
724 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
725 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
726 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
727 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
728 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
729 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
731 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
732 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
733 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
734 even though it's older than dest.
735 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
736 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
737 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
738 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
739 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
741 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
742 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
743 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
744 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
745 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
746 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
747 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
749 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
750 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
751 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
753 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
754 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
755 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
756 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
757 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
760 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
761 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
762 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
763 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
764 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
766 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
769 ========================================================================
770 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
771 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
774 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
775 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
777 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
778 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
779 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
780 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
781 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
783 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
784 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
785 that specifies a non-directory
788 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
789 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
790 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
791 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
792 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
793 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
794 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
795 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
796 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
797 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
798 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
799 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
800 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
801 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
802 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
803 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
804 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
805 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
806 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
807 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
808 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
809 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
810 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
811 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
813 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
814 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
815 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
817 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
819 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
820 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
822 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
823 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
824 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
825 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
826 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
828 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
829 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
830 required support; from Bruno Haible.
831 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
832 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
834 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
836 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
837 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
838 * still more portability fixes
839 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
840 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
842 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
844 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
846 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
848 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
849 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
850 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
851 there is any time remaining
852 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
854 ========================================================================
855 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
856 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
858 This package began as the union of the following:
859 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
projects / platform / upstream / coreutils.git / blob