1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.4-cvs (2006-??-??) [?????]
7 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
8 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
9 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
12 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
14 ** Improved robustness
16 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
17 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
19 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
20 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
21 or NFS-mounted partition.
23 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
24 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
28 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
29 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
30 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
31 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
32 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
33 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
35 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
36 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
38 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
39 or neglect to report file removal.
41 For the "groups" command:
43 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
44 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
46 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
48 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
50 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
54 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
55 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
58 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
60 ** Changes in behavior
62 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
63 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
64 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
65 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
67 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
68 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
69 a final `./' or `../' component.
71 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
72 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
75 ** Infrastructure changes
77 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
78 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
79 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
80 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
84 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
87 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
88 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
89 dirent.d_type support.
91 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
92 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
94 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
95 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
96 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
97 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
100 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
102 ** Changes in behavior
104 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
108 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
109 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
113 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
114 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
115 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
117 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
118 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
120 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
121 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
123 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
125 ** Improved robustness
127 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
128 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
129 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
131 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
132 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
135 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
136 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
138 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
139 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
141 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
142 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
144 ** Changes in behavior
146 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
147 where the two are distinct.
149 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
150 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
151 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
152 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
153 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
154 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
155 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
156 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
157 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
158 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
159 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
160 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
161 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
162 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
163 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
164 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
165 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
167 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
168 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
169 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
171 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
172 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
173 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
174 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
177 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
178 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
182 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
183 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
184 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
185 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
187 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
188 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
189 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
191 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
192 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
193 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
194 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
195 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
198 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
199 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
201 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
202 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
203 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
204 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
206 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
207 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
208 successful and the output is easier to parse.
210 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
211 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
212 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
213 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
215 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
216 and sticky) with the -m option.
218 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
219 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
220 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
221 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
222 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
224 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
225 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
227 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
231 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
232 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
233 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
234 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
236 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
238 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
240 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
241 silently ignoring one of them.
243 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
244 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
245 containing this change was 5.92.
247 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
248 automatically newline terminated.
250 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
251 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
252 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
253 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
256 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
257 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
258 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
261 ** Scheduled for removal
263 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
264 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
266 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
267 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
268 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
269 command to unlink a directory.
271 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
272 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
273 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
274 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
278 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
279 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
280 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
281 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
282 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
283 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
287 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
288 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
290 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
292 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
293 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
294 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
296 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
297 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
300 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
301 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
303 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
304 list directories before files.
306 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
307 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
308 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
309 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
312 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
314 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
316 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
317 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
318 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
320 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
321 list of NUL-terminated file names.
325 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
326 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
327 usually printing nothing.
329 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
331 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
332 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
333 them with hard-linked directories.
335 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
336 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
337 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
339 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
340 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
341 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
343 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
346 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
347 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
349 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
350 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
352 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
353 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
355 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
356 all command-line arguments.
358 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
360 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
362 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
363 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
365 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
367 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
368 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
369 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
370 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
371 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
373 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
374 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
376 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
377 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
378 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
379 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
381 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
383 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
387 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
388 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
390 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
391 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
393 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
394 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
396 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
397 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
399 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
400 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
402 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
404 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
405 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
406 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
409 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
411 ** Build-related bug fixes
413 installing .mo files would fail
416 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
420 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
422 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
425 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
429 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
430 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
434 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
436 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
437 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
439 ** Deprecated options
441 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
442 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
444 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
448 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
450 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
451 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
452 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
453 conforming to older POSIX versions.
455 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
458 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
464 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
469 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
471 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
473 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
474 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
475 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
477 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
478 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
479 problematic usages. These include:
481 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
482 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
483 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
484 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
485 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
486 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
487 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
488 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
489 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
491 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
492 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
494 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
495 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
496 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
497 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
499 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
500 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
501 between binary and text files.
503 The following programs now always use text input/output:
507 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
511 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
512 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
515 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
517 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
518 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
520 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
521 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
522 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
524 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
526 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
528 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
529 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
530 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
534 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
536 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
537 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
539 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
540 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
541 blocks until F contains N blocks.
545 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
546 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
550 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
551 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
552 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
556 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
557 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
561 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
563 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
565 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
569 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
570 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
571 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
573 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
574 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
575 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
576 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
577 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
579 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
583 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
584 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
585 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
587 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
589 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
590 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
591 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
592 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
594 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
596 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
597 rather than silently wrapping around.
599 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
600 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
602 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
603 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
605 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
606 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
607 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
610 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
612 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
614 ** Improved robustness
616 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
617 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
618 no matter how large the result.
620 ** Improved portability
622 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
623 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
625 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
627 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
628 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
629 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
631 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
632 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
636 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
637 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
639 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
641 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
642 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
643 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
644 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
646 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
647 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
649 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
650 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
651 categories if not specified by dircolors.
653 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
655 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
656 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
658 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
659 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
661 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
663 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
664 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
666 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
667 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
669 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
670 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
671 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
673 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
675 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
677 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
681 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
683 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
684 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
685 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
687 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
688 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
690 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
691 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
692 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
694 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
695 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
697 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
698 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
699 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
700 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
702 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
703 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
705 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
706 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
707 the file system does not support it.
709 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
711 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
712 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
714 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
716 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
717 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
719 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
720 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
721 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
722 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
724 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
725 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
728 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
729 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
730 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
731 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
733 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
734 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
735 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
736 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
738 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
739 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
741 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
743 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
744 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
745 reporting incorrect results.
749 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
750 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
752 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
755 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
757 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
758 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
760 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
761 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
763 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
766 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
767 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
768 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
769 the file name does not look like a page range.
771 printf has several changes:
773 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
774 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
776 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
777 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
778 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
780 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
781 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
784 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
785 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
787 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
788 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
790 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
792 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
793 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
795 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
797 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
799 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
800 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
801 when first encountering the directory.
805 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
806 output; POSIX requires this.
808 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
809 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
811 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
813 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
814 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
816 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
817 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
819 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
820 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
821 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
822 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
823 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
824 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
825 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
827 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
828 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
829 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
831 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
832 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
834 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
836 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
838 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
839 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
840 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
841 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
843 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
847 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
848 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
849 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
850 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
851 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
853 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
854 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
855 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
857 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
858 is longer than PATH_MAX.
860 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
861 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
863 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
864 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
865 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
866 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
867 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
869 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
870 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
872 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
873 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
875 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
877 nocreat do not create the output file
878 excl fail if the output file already exists
879 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
880 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
882 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
884 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
885 direct use direct I/O for data
886 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
887 sync likewise, but also for metadata
888 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
889 nofollow do not follow symlinks
890 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
892 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
894 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
895 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
898 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
899 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
900 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
901 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
902 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
903 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
905 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
906 list of NUL-terminated file names.
908 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
911 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
913 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
915 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
916 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
918 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
919 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
920 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
922 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
923 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
924 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
926 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
928 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
929 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
931 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
932 for compatibility with bash.
934 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
936 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
937 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
938 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
939 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
941 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
942 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
944 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
946 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
947 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
948 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
950 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
953 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
955 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
956 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
957 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
958 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
959 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
960 an offset, not as a file name.
962 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
963 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
965 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
966 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
968 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
969 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
971 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
972 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
973 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
975 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
976 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
978 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
979 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
983 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
985 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
987 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
991 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
992 or more arguments between partitions.
994 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
995 holes in the destination.
997 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
998 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
999 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1000 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1001 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1002 terminates immediately.
1004 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1006 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1008 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1009 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1010 not the empty string.
1012 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1013 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1017 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1018 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1019 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1022 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1029 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1033 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1034 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1036 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1037 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1039 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1040 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1041 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1044 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1048 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1049 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1051 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1052 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1054 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1055 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1056 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1058 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1060 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1063 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1065 ** Configuration option
1067 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1068 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1072 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1073 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1077 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1078 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1079 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1082 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1083 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1084 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1085 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1086 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1087 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1088 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1091 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1095 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1096 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1097 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1099 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1100 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1102 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1104 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1105 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1106 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1107 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1109 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1111 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1112 not just the ones that reference directories
1114 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1115 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1117 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1118 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1119 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1121 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1122 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1123 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1124 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1125 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1126 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1128 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1133 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1134 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1136 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1138 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1140 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1142 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1143 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1145 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1146 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1148 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1150 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1154 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1156 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1158 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1159 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1160 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1161 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1162 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1164 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1165 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1167 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1168 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1170 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1171 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1173 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1174 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1175 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1179 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1180 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1181 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1182 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1183 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1184 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1185 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1186 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1187 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1188 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1189 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1190 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1191 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1192 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1194 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1196 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1197 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1199 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1201 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1203 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1204 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1206 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1208 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1209 without a trailing newline.
1211 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1212 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1214 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1217 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1221 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1223 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1225 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1226 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1227 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1228 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1230 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1232 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1233 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1234 be printed without leading spaces.
1236 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1237 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1242 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1243 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1244 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1246 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1248 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1249 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1251 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1252 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1254 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1255 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1257 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1259 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1261 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1263 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1264 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1266 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1268 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1270 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1271 byte offsets are specified.
1274 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1277 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1280 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1281 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1282 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1283 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1284 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1285 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1286 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1287 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1288 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1289 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1290 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1291 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1292 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1293 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1294 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1295 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1296 directory where M has write access.
1297 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1298 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1299 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1302 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1303 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1304 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1305 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1306 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1307 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1308 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1309 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1310 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1311 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1312 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1313 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1314 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1315 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1316 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1317 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1318 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1319 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1320 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1321 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1322 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1323 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1324 appeared one additional time.
1326 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1327 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1328 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1329 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1332 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1333 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1334 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1335 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1336 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1337 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1338 if there were more than 338.
1340 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1341 - false --help now exits nonzero
1344 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1345 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1346 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1347 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1350 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1351 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1352 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1353 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1354 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1357 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1358 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1359 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1360 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1361 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1362 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1363 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1366 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1367 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1368 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1369 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1370 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1371 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1373 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1374 under certain unusual conditions
1375 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1376 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1379 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1380 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1381 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1382 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1383 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1384 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1385 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1386 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1387 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1388 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1389 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1390 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1391 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1392 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1393 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1394 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1397 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1398 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1401 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1402 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1403 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1404 involving hard-linked directories
1405 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1406 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1407 character-special and block files
1410 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1411 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1412 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1413 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1414 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1415 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1416 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1417 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1418 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1420 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1421 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1422 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1423 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1424 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1425 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1426 specified on the command line.
1427 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1428 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1429 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1430 the first file untouched.
1431 * readlink: new program
1432 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1433 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1434 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1435 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1436 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1437 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1440 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1441 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1442 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1443 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1444 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1445 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1446 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1447 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1448 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1449 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1450 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1451 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1453 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1454 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1455 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1457 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1458 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1459 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1460 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1461 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1462 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1463 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1464 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1467 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1468 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1471 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1472 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1473 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1474 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1475 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1476 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1477 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1480 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1481 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1483 ========================================================================
1484 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1485 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1488 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1490 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1491 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1492 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1493 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1494 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1495 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1496 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1497 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1498 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1499 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1500 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1501 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1503 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1504 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1505 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1506 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1508 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1511 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1513 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1514 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1515 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1516 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1517 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1518 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1519 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1522 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1523 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1524 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1525 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1526 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1527 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1528 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1529 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1530 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1531 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1532 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1533 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1534 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1535 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1536 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1537 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1539 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1540 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1542 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1543 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1544 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1545 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1546 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1547 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1549 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1550 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1551 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1552 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1553 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1554 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1555 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1557 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1558 the source files in the following example:
1559 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1560 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1561 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1562 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1563 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1564 links between source files with --preserve=links
1565 * cp accepts new options:
1566 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1567 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1568 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1569 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1570 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1571 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1572 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1573 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1574 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1576 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1577 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1578 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1579 even though it's older than dest.
1580 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1581 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1582 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1583 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1584 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1586 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1587 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1588 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1589 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1590 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1591 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1592 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1594 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1595 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1596 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1598 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1599 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1600 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1601 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1602 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1603 This is the default.
1605 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1606 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1607 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1608 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1609 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1611 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1614 ========================================================================
1615 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1616 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1619 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1620 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1622 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1623 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1624 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1625 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1626 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1628 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1629 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1630 that specifies a non-directory
1633 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1634 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1635 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1636 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1637 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1638 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1639 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1640 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1641 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1642 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1643 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1644 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1645 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1646 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1647 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1648 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1649 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1650 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1651 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1652 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1653 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1654 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1655 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1656 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1658 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1659 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1660 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1662 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1664 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1665 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1667 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1668 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1669 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1670 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1671 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1673 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1674 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1675 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1676 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1677 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1679 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1681 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1682 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1683 * still more portability fixes
1684 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1685 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1687 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1689 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1691 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1693 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1694 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1695 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1696 there is any time remaining
1697 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1699 ========================================================================
1700 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1701 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1703 This package began as the union of the following:
1704 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1706 ========================================================================
1708 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1711 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1712 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1713 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1714 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1715 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1716 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.