1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (????-??-??) [stable]
7 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
8 with no USERNAME argument.
10 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
11 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
12 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
15 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
19 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
21 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
22 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
23 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
24 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
26 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
27 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
29 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
30 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
32 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
33 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
35 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
36 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
37 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
38 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
40 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
41 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
42 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
43 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
44 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
45 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
47 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
48 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
50 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
51 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
52 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
54 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
55 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
57 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
58 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
60 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
61 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
62 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
63 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
65 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
66 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
68 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
69 in more cases when a directory is empty.
71 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
72 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
73 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
77 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
78 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
80 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
81 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
82 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
83 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
87 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
88 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
90 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
92 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
96 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
97 which have negative errno values.
101 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
105 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
109 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
110 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
113 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
117 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
118 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
119 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
121 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
122 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
123 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
124 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
128 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
129 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
130 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
131 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
134 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
138 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
140 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
141 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
142 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
145 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
149 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
150 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
152 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
154 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
156 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
158 ** Programs no longer installed by default
162 ** Changes in behavior
164 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
165 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
167 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
168 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
170 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
171 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
172 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
176 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
177 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
178 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
179 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
180 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
181 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
182 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
183 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
184 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
185 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
186 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
188 The following commands and options now support the standard size
189 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
190 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
193 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
196 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
197 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
198 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
200 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
201 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
202 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
207 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
208 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
209 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
210 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
212 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
213 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
214 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
215 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
216 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
217 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
218 of "make check" fail.
220 ** Remove deprecated options
222 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
223 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
224 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
225 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
226 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
228 ** Improved robustness
230 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
231 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
232 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
233 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
234 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
235 loss of the contents of a/f.
237 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
238 in its 35-colon command-line argument
242 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
243 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
244 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
246 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
247 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
248 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
249 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
251 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
252 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
253 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
254 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
255 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
256 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
257 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
258 destination is a symlink.
260 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
262 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
263 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
265 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
266 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
268 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
270 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
271 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
273 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
274 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
276 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
279 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
280 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
282 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
283 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
285 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
286 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
287 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
288 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
290 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
291 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
292 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
294 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
295 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
296 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
298 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
299 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
300 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
301 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
303 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
304 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
305 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
307 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
308 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
310 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
311 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
313 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
315 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
316 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
317 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
319 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
320 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
322 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
323 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
325 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
326 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
328 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
329 [present in the original version]
332 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
336 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
338 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
339 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
340 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
342 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
343 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
345 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
349 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
350 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
352 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
353 support but with insufficient /proc support.
355 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
356 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
358 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
359 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
360 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
361 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
362 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
363 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
365 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
366 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
369 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
370 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
372 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
375 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
376 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
377 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
379 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
380 directory is unreadable.
382 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
383 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
384 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
386 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
387 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
388 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
389 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
390 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
393 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
394 Before it would print nothing.
396 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
398 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
399 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
400 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
401 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
402 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
403 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
404 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
405 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
407 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
411 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
412 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
413 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
415 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
416 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
417 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
418 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
421 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
425 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
426 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
427 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
428 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
429 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
430 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
431 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
433 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
434 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
435 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
436 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
437 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
438 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
439 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
440 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
442 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
443 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
444 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
447 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
451 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
452 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
454 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
455 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
456 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
458 ** Improved robustness
460 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
461 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
462 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
465 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
469 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
470 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
471 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
472 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
473 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
475 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
479 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
482 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
486 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
487 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
488 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
489 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
491 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
492 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
494 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
495 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
496 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
499 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
501 ** Improved robustness
503 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
504 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
506 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
507 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
508 or NFS-mounted partition.
510 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
511 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
515 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
516 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
517 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
518 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
519 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
520 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
522 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
523 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
525 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
526 or neglect to report file removal.
528 For the "groups" command:
530 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
531 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
533 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
535 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
537 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
541 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
542 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
545 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
547 ** Changes in behavior
549 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
550 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
551 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
552 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
554 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
555 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
556 a final `./' or `../' component.
558 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
559 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
562 ** Infrastructure changes
564 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
565 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
566 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
567 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
571 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
574 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
575 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
576 dirent.d_type support.
578 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
579 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
581 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
582 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
583 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
584 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
587 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
589 ** Changes in behavior
591 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
595 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
596 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
600 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
601 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
602 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
604 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
605 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
607 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
608 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
610 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
612 ** Improved robustness
614 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
615 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
616 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
618 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
619 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
622 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
623 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
625 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
626 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
628 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
629 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
631 ** Changes in behavior
633 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
634 where the two are distinct.
636 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
637 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
638 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
639 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
640 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
641 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
642 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
643 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
644 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
645 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
646 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
647 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
648 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
649 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
650 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
651 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
652 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
654 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
655 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
656 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
658 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
659 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
660 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
661 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
664 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
665 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
669 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
670 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
671 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
672 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
674 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
675 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
676 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
678 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
679 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
680 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
681 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
682 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
685 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
686 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
688 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
689 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
690 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
691 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
693 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
694 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
695 successful and the output is easier to parse.
697 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
698 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
699 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
700 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
702 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
703 and sticky) with the -m option.
705 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
706 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
707 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
708 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
709 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
711 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
712 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
714 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
718 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
719 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
720 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
721 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
723 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
725 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
727 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
728 silently ignoring one of them.
730 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
731 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
732 containing this change was 5.92.
734 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
735 automatically newline terminated.
737 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
738 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
739 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
740 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
743 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
744 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
745 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
748 ** Scheduled for removal
750 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
751 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
753 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
754 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
755 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
756 command to unlink a directory.
758 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
759 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
760 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
761 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
765 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
766 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
767 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
768 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
769 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
770 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
774 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
775 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
777 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
779 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
780 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
781 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
783 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
784 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
787 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
788 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
790 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
791 list directories before files.
793 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
794 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
795 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
796 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
799 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
801 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
803 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
804 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
805 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
807 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
808 list of NUL-terminated file names.
812 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
813 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
814 usually printing nothing.
816 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
818 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
819 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
820 them with hard-linked directories.
822 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
823 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
824 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
826 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
827 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
828 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
830 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
833 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
834 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
836 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
837 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
839 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
840 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
842 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
843 all command-line arguments.
845 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
847 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
849 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
850 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
852 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
854 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
855 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
856 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
857 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
858 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
860 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
861 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
863 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
864 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
865 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
866 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
868 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
870 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
874 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
875 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
877 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
878 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
880 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
881 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
883 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
884 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
886 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
887 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
889 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
891 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
892 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
893 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
896 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
898 ** Build-related bug fixes
900 installing .mo files would fail
903 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
907 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
909 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
912 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
916 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
917 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
921 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
923 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
924 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
926 ** Deprecated options
928 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
929 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
931 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
935 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
937 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
938 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
939 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
940 conforming to older POSIX versions.
942 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
945 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
951 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
956 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
958 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
960 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
961 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
962 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
964 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
965 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
966 problematic usages. These include:
968 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
969 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
970 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
971 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
972 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
973 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
974 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
975 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
976 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
978 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
979 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
981 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
982 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
983 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
984 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
986 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
987 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
988 between binary and text files.
990 The following programs now always use text input/output:
994 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
998 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
999 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1001 head tac tail tee tr
1002 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1004 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1005 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1007 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1008 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1009 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1011 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1013 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1015 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1016 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1017 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1021 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1023 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1024 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1026 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1027 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1028 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1032 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1033 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1037 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1038 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1039 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1043 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1044 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1048 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1050 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1052 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1056 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1057 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1058 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1060 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1061 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1062 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1063 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1064 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1066 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1070 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1071 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1072 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1074 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1076 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1077 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1078 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1079 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1081 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1083 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1084 rather than silently wrapping around.
1086 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1087 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1089 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1090 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1092 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1093 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1094 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1095 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1097 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1099 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1101 ** Improved robustness
1103 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1104 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1105 no matter how large the result.
1107 ** Improved portability
1109 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1110 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1112 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1114 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1115 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1116 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1118 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1119 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1123 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1124 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1126 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1128 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1129 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1130 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1131 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1133 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1134 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1136 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1137 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1138 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1140 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1142 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1143 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1145 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1146 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1148 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1150 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1151 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1153 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1154 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1156 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1157 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1158 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1160 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1162 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1164 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1168 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1170 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1171 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1172 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1174 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1175 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1177 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1178 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1179 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1181 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1182 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1184 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1185 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1186 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1187 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1189 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1190 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1192 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1193 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1194 the file system does not support it.
1196 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1198 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1199 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1201 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1203 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1204 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1206 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1207 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1208 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1209 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1211 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1212 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1215 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1216 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1217 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1218 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1220 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1221 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1222 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1223 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1225 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1226 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1228 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1230 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1231 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1232 reporting incorrect results.
1236 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1237 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1239 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1242 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1244 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1245 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1247 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1248 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1250 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1253 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1254 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1255 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1256 the file name does not look like a page range.
1258 printf has several changes:
1260 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1261 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1263 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1264 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1265 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1267 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1268 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1271 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1272 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1274 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1275 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1277 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1279 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1280 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1282 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1284 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1286 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1287 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1288 when first encountering the directory.
1292 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1293 output; POSIX requires this.
1295 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1296 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1298 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1300 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1301 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1303 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1304 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1306 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1307 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1308 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1309 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1310 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1311 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1312 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1314 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1315 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1316 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1318 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1319 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1321 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1323 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1325 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1326 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1327 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1328 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1330 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1334 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1335 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1336 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1337 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1338 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1340 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1341 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1342 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1344 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1345 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1347 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1348 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1350 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1351 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1352 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1353 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1354 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1356 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1357 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1359 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1360 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1362 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1364 nocreat do not create the output file
1365 excl fail if the output file already exists
1366 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1367 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1369 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1371 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1372 direct use direct I/O for data
1373 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1374 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1375 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1376 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1377 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1379 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1381 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1382 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1385 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1386 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1387 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1388 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1389 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1390 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1392 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1393 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1395 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1398 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1400 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1402 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1403 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1405 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1406 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1407 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1409 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1410 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1411 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1413 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1415 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1416 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1418 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1419 for compatibility with bash.
1421 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1423 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1424 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1425 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1426 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1428 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1429 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1431 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1432 ls supports TABSIZE.
1433 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1434 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1435 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1437 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1440 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1442 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1443 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1444 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1445 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1446 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1447 an offset, not as a file name.
1449 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1450 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1452 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1453 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1455 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1456 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1458 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1459 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1460 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1462 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1463 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1465 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1466 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1470 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1472 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1474 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1478 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1479 or more arguments between partitions.
1481 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1482 holes in the destination.
1484 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1485 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1486 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1487 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1488 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1489 terminates immediately.
1491 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1493 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1495 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1496 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1497 not the empty string.
1499 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1500 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1504 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1505 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1506 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1509 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1516 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1520 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1521 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1523 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1524 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1526 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1527 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1528 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1531 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1535 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1536 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1538 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1539 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1541 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1542 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1543 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1545 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1547 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1550 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1552 ** Configuration option
1554 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1555 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1559 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1560 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1564 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1565 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1566 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1569 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1570 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1571 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1572 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1573 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1574 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1575 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1578 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1582 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1583 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1584 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1586 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1587 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1589 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1591 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1592 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1593 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1594 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1596 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1598 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1599 not just the ones that reference directories
1601 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1602 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1604 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1605 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1606 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1608 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1609 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1610 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1611 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1612 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1613 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1615 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1620 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1621 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1623 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1625 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1627 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1629 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1630 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1632 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1633 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1635 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1637 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1641 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1643 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1645 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1646 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1647 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1648 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1649 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1651 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1652 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1654 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1655 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1657 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1658 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1660 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1661 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1662 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1666 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1667 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1668 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1669 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1670 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1671 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1672 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1673 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1674 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1675 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1676 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1677 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1678 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1679 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1681 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1683 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1684 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1686 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1688 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1690 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1691 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1693 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1695 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1696 without a trailing newline.
1698 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1699 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1701 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1704 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1708 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1710 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1712 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1713 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1714 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1715 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1717 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1719 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1720 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1721 be printed without leading spaces.
1723 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1724 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1729 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1730 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1731 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1733 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1735 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1736 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1738 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1739 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1741 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1742 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1744 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1746 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1748 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1750 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1751 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1753 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1755 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1757 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1758 byte offsets are specified.
1761 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1764 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1767 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1768 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1769 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1770 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1771 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1772 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1773 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1774 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1775 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1776 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1777 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1778 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1779 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1780 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1781 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1782 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1783 directory where M has write access.
1784 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1785 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1786 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1789 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1790 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1791 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1792 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1793 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1794 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1795 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1796 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1797 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1798 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1799 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1800 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1801 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1802 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1803 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1804 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1805 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1806 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1807 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1808 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1809 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1810 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1811 appeared one additional time.
1813 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1814 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1815 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1816 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1819 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1820 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1821 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1822 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1823 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1824 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1825 if there were more than 338.
1827 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1828 - false --help now exits nonzero
1831 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1832 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1833 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1834 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1837 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1838 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1839 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1840 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1841 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1844 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1845 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1846 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1847 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1848 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1849 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1850 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1853 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1854 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1855 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1856 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1857 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1858 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1860 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1861 under certain unusual conditions
1862 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1863 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1866 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1867 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1868 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1869 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1870 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1871 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1872 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1873 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1874 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1875 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1876 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1877 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1878 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1879 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1880 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1881 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1884 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1885 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1888 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1889 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1890 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1891 involving hard-linked directories
1892 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1893 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1894 character-special and block files
1897 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1898 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1899 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1900 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1901 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1902 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1903 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1904 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1905 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1907 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1908 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1909 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1910 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1911 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1912 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1913 specified on the command line.
1914 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1915 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1916 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1917 the first file untouched.
1918 * readlink: new program
1919 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1920 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1921 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1922 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1923 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1924 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1927 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1928 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1929 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1930 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1931 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1932 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1933 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1934 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1935 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1936 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1937 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1938 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1940 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1941 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1942 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1944 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1945 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1946 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1947 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1948 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1949 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1950 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1951 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1954 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1955 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1958 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1959 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1960 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1961 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1962 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1963 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1964 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1967 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1968 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1970 ========================================================================
1971 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1972 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1975 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1977 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1978 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1979 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1980 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1981 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1982 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1983 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1984 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1985 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1986 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1987 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1988 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1990 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1991 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1992 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1993 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1995 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1998 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2000 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2001 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2002 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2003 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2004 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2005 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2006 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2009 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2010 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2011 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2012 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2013 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2014 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2015 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2016 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2017 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2018 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2019 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2020 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2021 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2022 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2023 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2024 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2026 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2027 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2029 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2030 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2031 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2032 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2033 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2034 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2036 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2037 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2038 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2039 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2040 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2041 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2042 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2044 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2045 the source files in the following example:
2046 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2047 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2048 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2049 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2050 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2051 links between source files with --preserve=links
2052 * cp accepts new options:
2053 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2054 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2055 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2056 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2057 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2058 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2059 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2060 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2061 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2063 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2064 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2065 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2066 even though it's older than dest.
2067 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2068 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2069 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2070 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2071 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2073 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2074 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2075 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2076 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2077 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2078 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2079 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2081 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2082 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2083 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2085 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2086 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2087 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2088 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2089 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2090 This is the default.
2092 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2093 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2094 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2095 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2096 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2098 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2101 ========================================================================
2102 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2103 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2106 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2107 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2109 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2110 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2111 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2112 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2113 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2115 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2116 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2117 that specifies a non-directory
2120 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2121 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2122 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2123 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2124 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2125 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2126 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2127 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2128 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2129 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2130 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2131 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2132 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2133 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2134 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2135 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2136 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2137 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2138 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2139 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2140 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2141 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2142 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2143 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2145 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2146 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2147 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2149 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2151 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2152 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2154 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2155 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2156 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2157 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2158 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2160 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2161 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2162 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2163 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2164 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2166 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2168 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2169 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2170 * still more portability fixes
2171 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2172 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2174 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2176 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2178 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2180 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2181 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2182 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2183 there is any time remaining
2184 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2186 ========================================================================
2187 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2188 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2190 This package began as the union of the following:
2191 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2193 ========================================================================
2195 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2198 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2199 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2200 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2201 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2202 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2203 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.