1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
8 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
9 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
11 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
12 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
14 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
15 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
16 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
17 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
18 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
20 fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
21 proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
22 Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
23 Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
24 [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
25 introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
26 as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
27 chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
29 pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at.
30 [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q]
32 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
33 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
35 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
36 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
38 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
39 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
40 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
42 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
43 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
44 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
45 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
47 ** Changes in behavior
49 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
50 when -v or -c specified.
52 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
53 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
57 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
58 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
59 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
61 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
62 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
63 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
64 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
65 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
66 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
67 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
69 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
70 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
71 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
75 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
78 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
79 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
81 join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
82 unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
84 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
85 For example `shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2` no longer exhausts memory.
87 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
89 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
93 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
94 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
97 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
101 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
102 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
104 ** Changes in behavior
106 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
107 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
108 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
109 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
110 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
111 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
113 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
114 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
115 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
119 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
122 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
126 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
127 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
128 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
130 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
131 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
132 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
134 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
135 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
136 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
138 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
139 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
141 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
142 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
144 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
145 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
147 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
148 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
152 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
153 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
154 processed portion thereof.
156 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
157 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
159 ** Changes in behavior
161 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
162 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
163 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
165 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
166 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
167 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
169 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
170 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
172 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
173 Use --preserve-context instead.
175 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
178 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
182 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
183 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
184 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
185 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
186 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
188 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
189 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
191 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
192 reject file names invalid for that file system.
194 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
195 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
199 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
200 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
201 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
202 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
203 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
204 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
205 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
206 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
208 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
209 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
210 the same number of fields are output for each line.
212 ** Changes in behavior
214 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
215 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
216 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
219 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
223 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
224 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
225 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
228 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
232 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
233 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
235 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
236 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
238 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
239 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
241 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
242 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
243 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
244 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
246 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
247 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
249 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
250 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
251 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
253 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
255 ** Changes in behavior
257 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
258 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
259 to the number of available processors.
263 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
266 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
270 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
271 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
272 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
273 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
275 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
276 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
277 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
279 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
280 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
282 ** Changes in behavior
284 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
285 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
287 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
288 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
289 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
290 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
291 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
292 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
294 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
295 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
296 the same way as the others.
299 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
303 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
304 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
305 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
307 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
308 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
310 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
311 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
312 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
314 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
315 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
317 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
318 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
320 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
321 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
322 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
324 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
325 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
326 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
327 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
331 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
332 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
334 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
337 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
338 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
340 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
342 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
343 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
344 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
346 ** Changes in behavior
348 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
349 rather than its aliased target.
351 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
352 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
353 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
355 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
356 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
357 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
358 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
359 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
360 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
361 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
362 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
364 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
366 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
368 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
369 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
372 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
373 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
374 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
375 control like taskset for example.
377 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
379 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
380 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
381 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
382 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
383 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
384 includes %C when context information is available.
386 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
387 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
388 rather than a file system attribute.
390 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
391 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
392 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
393 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
395 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
396 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
397 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
399 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
400 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
401 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
404 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
408 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
409 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
411 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
413 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
414 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
416 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
417 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
418 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
419 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
421 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
422 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
423 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
427 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
428 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
430 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
431 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
432 duration after the initial signal was sent.
434 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
435 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
436 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
437 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
438 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
439 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
440 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
441 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
442 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
444 ** Changes in behavior
446 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
447 sequence when it would be a no-op.
449 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
450 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
453 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
457 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
458 of available processors, which may not have been the case
459 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
460 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
464 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
465 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
467 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
468 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
469 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
470 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
472 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
473 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
474 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
477 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
481 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
482 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
483 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
485 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
486 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
487 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
489 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
490 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
492 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
493 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
494 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
495 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
497 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
498 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
499 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
501 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
502 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
503 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
504 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
506 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
507 renamed-aside and then recreated.
508 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
510 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
511 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
512 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
513 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
515 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
516 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
517 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
519 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
520 processes will not intersperse their output.
521 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
524 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
528 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
529 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
531 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
532 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
534 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
535 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
536 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
537 the presence of the empty string argument.
538 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
540 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
541 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
542 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
543 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
545 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
546 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
548 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
549 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
550 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
552 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
553 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
554 and with a malicious user on the same system
555 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
556 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
559 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
563 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
564 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
565 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
567 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
568 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
569 offending directory and all "contents."
571 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
572 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
573 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
575 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
576 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
577 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
579 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
580 processes will not intersperse their output.
581 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
582 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
584 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
585 output the name of the file to stdout.
586 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
588 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
589 call fails with errno == EACCES.
590 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
592 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
593 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
596 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
597 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
598 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
600 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
601 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
602 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
603 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
604 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
605 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
607 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
608 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
609 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
610 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
612 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
613 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
615 ** Changes in behavior
617 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
618 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
619 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
620 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
621 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
623 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
624 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
625 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
626 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
628 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
630 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
631 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
632 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
633 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
634 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
638 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
642 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
643 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
645 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
646 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
648 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
649 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
650 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
652 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
653 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
656 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
660 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
661 when the source file doesn't have write access.
662 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
664 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
665 to accommodate leap seconds.
666 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
668 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
669 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
670 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
672 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
674 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
675 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
676 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
678 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
679 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
680 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
681 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
682 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
686 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
687 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
688 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
689 directory or a symlink to a directory.
691 ** Changes in behavior
693 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
694 environment variable is set.
696 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
697 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
698 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
702 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
703 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
704 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
705 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
707 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
708 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
709 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
710 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
714 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
715 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
716 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
718 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
719 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
720 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
721 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
722 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
723 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
726 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
727 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
730 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
734 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
735 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
736 and libraries tested at configure time.
737 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
739 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
740 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
742 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
743 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
745 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
746 printing a summary to stderr.
747 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
749 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
750 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
751 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
753 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
754 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
756 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
757 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
758 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
759 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
761 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
762 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
763 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
764 which is relatively unusual.
765 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
767 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
768 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
769 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
770 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
771 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
772 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
773 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
777 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
778 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
779 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
780 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
781 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
785 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
786 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
788 ** Changes in behavior
790 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
791 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
792 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
793 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
794 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
797 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
801 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
802 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
804 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
805 before data copying has started.
807 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
808 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
810 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
811 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
812 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
813 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
815 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
816 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
817 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
818 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
820 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
825 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
826 for its standard streams.
828 ** Changes in behavior
830 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
831 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
832 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
833 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
834 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
835 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
837 ** Deprecated options
839 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
840 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
844 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
846 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
847 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
850 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
852 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
853 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
855 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
856 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
859 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
863 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
864 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
865 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
866 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
868 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
869 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
870 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
871 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
872 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
877 make check: two tests have been corrected
881 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
882 inherited from gnulib.
885 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
889 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
890 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
891 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
892 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
894 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
895 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
897 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
899 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
900 systems without xattr support.
902 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
903 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
904 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
906 ** Changes in behavior
908 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
909 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
910 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
911 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
913 ** Improved robustness
915 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
916 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
917 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
918 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
919 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
920 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
921 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
922 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
923 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
927 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
928 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
930 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
931 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
932 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
933 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
934 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
937 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
941 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
942 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
943 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
947 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
948 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
949 data was read, or on process exit.
950 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
952 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
953 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
954 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
955 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
957 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
958 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
959 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
960 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
962 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
963 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
965 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
966 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
968 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
969 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
970 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
972 ** Changes in behavior
974 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
975 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
976 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
978 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
979 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
981 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
982 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
983 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
986 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
990 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
992 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
993 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
994 install: Never copies xattrs
996 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
997 from overwriting any existing destination file
999 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
1000 mode where this feature is available.
1002 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
1003 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
1004 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
1005 do not modify the destination at all.
1007 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
1009 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
1013 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
1014 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1016 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1018 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1019 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1021 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1022 processing the first file name
1024 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1025 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1026 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1027 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1029 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1030 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1032 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1033 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1036 ** Changes in behavior
1038 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1039 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1041 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1042 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1043 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1045 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1046 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1048 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1050 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1051 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1052 is still marked with a '+'.
1055 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1059 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1060 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1064 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1065 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1066 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1067 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1068 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1069 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1071 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1072 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1074 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1075 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1077 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1079 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1080 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1081 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1083 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1084 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1086 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1087 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1088 used to factor large numbers.
1090 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1093 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1095 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1097 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1098 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1100 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1101 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1102 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1103 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1105 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1106 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1107 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1109 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1110 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1114 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1116 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1117 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1119 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1120 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1122 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1124 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1125 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1129 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1130 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1131 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1133 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1135 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1136 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1137 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1139 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1140 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1141 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1143 ** Changes in behavior
1145 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1146 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1149 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1153 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1154 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1155 'futimens' system calls.
1159 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1161 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1162 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1163 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1165 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1166 with no USERNAME argument.
1168 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1169 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1170 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1172 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1173 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1174 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1175 number of fields for some inputs.
1177 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1178 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1180 ** Changes in behavior
1182 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1183 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1186 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1190 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1192 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1193 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1194 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1195 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1197 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1198 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1200 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1201 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1203 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1204 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1206 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1207 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1208 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1209 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1211 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1212 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1213 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1214 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1215 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1216 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1218 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1219 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1221 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1222 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1223 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1225 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1226 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1228 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1229 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1231 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1232 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1233 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1234 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1236 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1237 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1239 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1240 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1242 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1243 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1244 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1248 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1249 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1251 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1252 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1253 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1254 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1258 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1259 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1261 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1263 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1267 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1268 which have negative errno values.
1272 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1276 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1280 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1281 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1284 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1288 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1289 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1290 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1292 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1293 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1294 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1295 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1299 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1300 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1301 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1302 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1305 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1309 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1311 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1312 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1313 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1316 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1320 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1321 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1323 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1325 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1327 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1329 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1333 ** Changes in behavior
1335 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1336 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1338 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1339 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1341 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1342 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1343 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1347 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1348 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1349 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1350 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1351 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1352 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1353 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1354 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1355 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1356 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1357 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1359 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1360 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1361 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1364 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1367 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1368 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1369 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1371 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1372 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1373 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1376 ** New build options
1378 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1379 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1380 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1381 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1383 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1384 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1385 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1386 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1387 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1388 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1389 of "make check" fail.
1391 ** Remove deprecated options
1393 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1394 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1395 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1396 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1397 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1399 ** Improved robustness
1401 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1402 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1403 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1404 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1405 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1406 loss of the contents of a/f.
1408 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1409 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1413 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1414 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1415 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1417 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1418 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1419 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1420 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1422 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1423 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1424 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1425 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1426 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1427 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1428 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1429 destination is a symlink.
1431 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1433 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1434 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1436 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1437 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1439 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1441 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1442 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1444 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1445 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1447 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1450 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1451 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1453 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1454 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1456 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1457 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1458 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1459 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1461 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1462 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1463 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1465 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1466 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1467 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1469 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1470 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1471 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1472 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1474 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1475 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1476 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1478 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1479 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1481 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1482 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1484 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1486 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1487 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1488 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1490 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1491 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1493 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1494 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1496 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1497 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1499 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1500 [present in the original version]
1503 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1507 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1509 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1510 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1511 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1513 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1514 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1516 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1520 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1521 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1523 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1524 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1526 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1527 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1529 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1530 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1531 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1532 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1533 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1534 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1536 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1537 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1540 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1541 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1543 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1546 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1547 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1548 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1550 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1551 directory is unreadable.
1553 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1554 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1555 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1557 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1558 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1559 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1560 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1561 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1564 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1565 Before it would print nothing.
1567 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1569 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1570 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1571 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1572 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1573 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1574 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1575 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1576 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1578 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1582 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1583 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1584 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1586 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1587 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1588 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1589 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1592 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1596 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1597 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1598 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1599 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1600 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1601 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1602 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1604 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1605 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1606 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1607 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1608 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1609 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1610 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1611 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1613 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1614 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1615 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1618 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1622 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1623 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1625 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1626 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1627 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1629 ** Improved robustness
1631 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1632 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1633 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1636 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1640 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1641 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1642 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1643 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1644 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1646 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1650 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1653 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1657 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1658 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1659 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1660 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1662 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1663 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1665 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1666 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1667 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1670 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1672 ** Improved robustness
1674 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1675 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1677 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1678 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1679 or NFS-mounted partition.
1681 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1682 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1686 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1687 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1688 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1689 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1690 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1691 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1693 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1694 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1696 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1697 or neglect to report file removal.
1699 For the "groups" command:
1701 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1702 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1704 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1706 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1708 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1712 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1713 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1716 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1718 ** Changes in behavior
1720 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1721 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1722 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1723 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1725 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1726 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1727 a final `./' or `../' component.
1729 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1730 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1731 this only for pipes.
1733 ** Infrastructure changes
1735 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1736 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1737 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1738 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1742 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1743 name is "." or "..".
1745 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1746 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1747 dirent.d_type support.
1749 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1750 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1752 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1753 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1754 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1755 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1758 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1760 ** Changes in behavior
1762 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1766 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1767 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1771 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1772 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1773 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1775 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1776 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1778 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1779 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1781 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1783 ** Improved robustness
1785 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1786 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1787 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1789 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1790 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1793 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1794 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1796 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1797 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1799 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1800 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1802 ** Changes in behavior
1804 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1805 where the two are distinct.
1807 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1808 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1809 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1810 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1811 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1812 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1813 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1814 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1815 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1816 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1817 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1818 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1819 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1820 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1821 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1822 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1823 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1825 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1826 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1827 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1829 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1830 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1831 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1832 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1835 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1836 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1840 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1841 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1842 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1843 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1845 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1846 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1847 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1849 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1850 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1851 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1852 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1853 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1856 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1857 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1859 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1860 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1861 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1862 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1864 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1865 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1866 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1868 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1869 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1870 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1871 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1873 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1874 and sticky) with the -m option.
1876 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1877 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1878 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1879 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1880 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1882 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1883 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1885 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1889 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1890 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1891 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1892 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1894 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1896 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1898 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1899 silently ignoring one of them.
1901 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1902 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1903 containing this change was 5.92.
1905 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1906 automatically newline terminated.
1908 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1909 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1910 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1911 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1914 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1915 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1916 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1919 ** Scheduled for removal
1921 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1922 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1924 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1925 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1926 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1927 command to unlink a directory.
1929 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1930 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1931 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1932 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1936 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1937 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1938 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1939 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1940 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1941 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1945 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1946 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1948 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1950 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1951 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1952 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1954 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1955 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1958 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1959 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1961 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1962 list directories before files.
1964 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1965 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1966 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1967 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1970 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1972 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1974 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1975 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1976 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1978 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1979 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1983 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1984 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1985 usually printing nothing.
1987 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1989 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1990 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1991 them with hard-linked directories.
1993 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1994 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1995 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1997 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1998 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1999 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
2001 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
2004 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
2005 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
2007 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
2008 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
2010 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
2011 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
2013 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
2014 all command-line arguments.
2016 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2018 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2020 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2021 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2023 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2025 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2026 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2027 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2028 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2029 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2031 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2032 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2034 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2035 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2036 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2037 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2039 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2041 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2045 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2046 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2048 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2049 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2051 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
2052 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2054 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2055 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
2057 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2058 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2060 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2062 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2063 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2064 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2067 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2069 ** Build-related bug fixes
2071 installing .mo files would fail
2074 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2078 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2080 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2083 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2087 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2088 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2092 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2094 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2095 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2097 ** Deprecated options
2099 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2100 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
2102 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2106 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2108 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
2109 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2110 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2111 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2113 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2116 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2122 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2127 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2129 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2131 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2132 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
2133 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
2135 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2136 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2137 problematic usages. These include:
2139 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2140 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2141 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2142 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2143 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2144 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2145 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2146 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2147 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2149 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2150 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2152 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2153 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2154 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2155 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2157 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2158 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2159 between binary and text files.
2161 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2165 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2169 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2170 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2172 head tac tail tee tr
2173 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2175 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2176 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2178 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2179 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2180 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2182 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2184 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2186 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2187 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2188 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2192 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2194 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2195 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2197 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2198 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2199 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2203 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2204 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2208 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2209 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2210 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2214 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2215 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2219 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2221 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2223 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2227 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2228 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2229 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2231 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2232 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2233 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2234 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2235 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2237 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2241 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2242 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2243 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2245 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2247 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2248 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2249 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2250 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2252 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2254 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2255 rather than silently wrapping around.
2257 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2258 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2260 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2261 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2263 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2264 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2265 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2266 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2268 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2270 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2272 ** Improved robustness
2274 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2275 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2276 no matter how large the result.
2278 ** Improved portability
2280 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2281 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2283 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2285 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2286 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2287 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2289 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2290 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2294 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2295 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2297 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2299 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2300 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2301 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2302 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2304 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2305 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2307 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2308 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2309 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2311 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2313 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2314 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2316 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2317 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2319 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2321 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2322 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2324 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2325 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2327 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2328 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2329 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2331 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2333 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2335 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2339 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2341 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2342 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2343 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2345 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2346 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2348 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2349 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2350 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2352 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2353 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2355 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2356 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2357 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2358 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2360 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2361 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2363 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2364 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2365 the file system does not support it.
2367 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2369 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2370 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2372 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2374 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2375 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2377 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2378 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2379 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2380 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2382 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2383 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2386 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2387 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2388 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2389 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2391 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2392 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2393 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2394 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2396 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2397 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2399 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2401 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2402 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2403 reporting incorrect results.
2407 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2408 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2410 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2413 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2415 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2416 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2418 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2419 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2421 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2424 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2425 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2426 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2427 the file name does not look like a page range.
2429 printf has several changes:
2431 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2432 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2434 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2435 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2436 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2438 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2439 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2442 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2443 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2445 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2446 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2448 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2450 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2451 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2453 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2455 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2457 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2458 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2459 when first encountering the directory.
2463 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2464 output; POSIX requires this.
2466 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2467 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2469 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2471 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2472 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2474 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2475 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2477 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2478 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2479 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2480 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2481 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2482 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2483 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2485 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2486 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2487 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2489 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2490 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2492 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2494 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2496 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2497 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2498 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2499 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2501 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2505 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2506 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2507 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2508 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2509 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2511 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2512 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2513 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2515 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2516 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2518 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2519 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2521 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2522 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2523 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2524 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2525 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2527 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2528 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2530 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2531 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2533 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2535 nocreat do not create the output file
2536 excl fail if the output file already exists
2537 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2538 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2540 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2542 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2543 direct use direct I/O for data
2544 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2545 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2546 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2547 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2548 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2550 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2552 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2553 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2556 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2557 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2558 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2559 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2560 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2561 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2563 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2564 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2566 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2569 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2571 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2573 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2574 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2576 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2577 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2578 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2580 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2581 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2582 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2584 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2586 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2587 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2589 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2590 for compatibility with bash.
2592 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2594 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2595 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2596 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2597 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2599 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2600 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2602 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2603 ls supports TABSIZE.
2604 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2605 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2606 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2608 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2611 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2613 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2614 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2615 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2616 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2617 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2618 an offset, not as a file name.
2620 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2621 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2623 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2624 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2626 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2627 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2629 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2630 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2631 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2633 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2634 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2636 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2637 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2641 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2643 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2645 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2649 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2650 or more arguments between partitions.
2652 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2653 holes in the destination.
2655 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2656 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2657 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2658 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2659 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2660 terminates immediately.
2662 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2664 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2666 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2667 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2668 not the empty string.
2670 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2671 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2675 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2676 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2677 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2680 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2687 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2691 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2692 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2694 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2695 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2697 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2698 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2699 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2702 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2706 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2707 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2709 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2710 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2712 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2713 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2714 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2716 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2718 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2721 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2723 ** Configuration option
2725 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2726 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2730 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2731 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2735 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2736 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2737 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2740 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2741 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2742 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2743 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2744 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2745 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2746 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2749 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2753 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2754 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2755 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2757 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2758 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2760 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2762 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2763 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2764 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2765 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2767 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2769 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2770 not just the ones that reference directories
2772 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2773 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2775 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2776 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2777 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2779 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2780 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2781 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2782 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2783 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2784 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2786 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2791 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2792 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2794 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2796 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2798 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2800 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2801 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2803 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2804 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2806 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2808 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2812 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2814 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2816 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2817 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2818 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2819 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2820 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2822 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2823 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2825 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2826 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2828 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2829 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2831 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2832 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2833 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2837 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2838 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2839 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2840 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2841 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2842 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2843 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2844 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2845 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2846 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2847 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2848 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2849 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2850 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2852 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2854 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2855 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2857 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2859 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2861 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2862 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2864 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2866 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2867 without a trailing newline.
2869 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2870 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2872 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2875 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2879 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2881 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2883 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2884 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2885 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2886 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2888 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2890 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2891 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2892 be printed without leading spaces.
2894 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2895 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2900 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2901 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2902 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2904 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2906 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2907 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2909 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2910 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2912 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2913 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2915 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2917 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2919 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2921 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2922 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2924 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2926 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2928 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2929 byte offsets are specified.
2932 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2935 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2938 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2939 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2940 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2941 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2942 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2943 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2944 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2945 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2946 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2947 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2948 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2949 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2950 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2951 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2952 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2953 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2954 directory where M has write access.
2955 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2956 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2957 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2960 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2961 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2962 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2963 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2964 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2965 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2966 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2967 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2968 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2969 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2970 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2971 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2972 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2973 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2974 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2975 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2976 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2977 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2978 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2979 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2980 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2981 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2982 appeared one additional time.
2984 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2985 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2986 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2987 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2990 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2991 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2992 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2993 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2994 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2995 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2996 if there were more than 338.
2998 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2999 - false --help now exits nonzero
3002 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
3003 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
3004 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
3005 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
3008 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
3009 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
3010 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
3011 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
3012 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3015 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3016 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3017 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3018 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
3019 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3020 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3021 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3024 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3025 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3026 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3027 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3028 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3029 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3031 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3032 under certain unusual conditions
3033 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3034 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3037 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3038 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3039 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3040 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3041 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3042 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
3043 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3044 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3045 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
3046 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
3047 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3048 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3049 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3050 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3051 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3052 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3055 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3056 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3059 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3060 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3061 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3062 involving hard-linked directories
3063 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3064 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
3065 character-special and block files
3068 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3069 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3070 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3071 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3072 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3073 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3074 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3075 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3076 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3078 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
3079 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
3080 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3081 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3082 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3083 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3084 specified on the command line.
3085 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3086 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
3087 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3088 the first file untouched.
3089 * readlink: new program
3090 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3091 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3092 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3093 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3094 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3095 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3098 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3099 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3100 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3101 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3102 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3103 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3104 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
3105 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
3106 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3107 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3108 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3109 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3111 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3112 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3113 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3115 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3116 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3117 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3118 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3119 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3120 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3121 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3122 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
3125 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3126 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3129 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3130 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3131 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3132 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3133 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
3134 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3135 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3138 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3139 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3141 ========================================================================
3142 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3143 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3146 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3148 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3149 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3150 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3151 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3152 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3153 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3154 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3155 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
3156 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3157 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3158 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3159 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3161 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3162 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3163 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3164 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3166 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3169 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3171 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3172 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3173 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3174 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3175 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3176 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3177 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3180 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3181 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3182 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3183 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3184 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3185 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3186 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3187 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3188 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3189 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3190 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3191 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3192 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3193 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3194 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3195 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3197 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3198 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3200 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3201 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3202 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3203 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3204 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3205 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3207 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3208 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3209 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3210 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3211 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3212 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3213 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3215 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3216 the source files in the following example:
3217 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3218 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3219 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3220 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3221 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3222 links between source files with --preserve=links
3223 * cp accepts new options:
3224 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3225 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3226 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3227 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3228 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3229 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3230 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3231 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3232 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3234 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3235 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3236 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3237 even though it's older than dest.
3238 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3239 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3240 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3241 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3242 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3244 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3245 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3246 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3247 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3248 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3249 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3250 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3252 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3253 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3254 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3256 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3257 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3258 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3259 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3260 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3261 This is the default.
3263 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3264 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3265 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3266 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3267 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3269 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3272 ========================================================================
3273 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3274 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3277 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3278 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3280 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3281 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3282 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3283 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3284 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3286 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3287 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3288 that specifies a non-directory
3291 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3292 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3293 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3294 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3295 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3296 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3297 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3298 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3299 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3300 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3301 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3302 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3303 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3304 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3305 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3306 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3307 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3308 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3309 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3310 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3311 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3312 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3313 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3314 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3316 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3317 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3318 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3320 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3322 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3323 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3325 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3326 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3327 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3328 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3329 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3331 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3332 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3333 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3334 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3335 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3337 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3339 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3340 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3341 * still more portability fixes
3342 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3343 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3345 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3347 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3349 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3351 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3352 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3353 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3354 there is any time remaining
3355 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3357 ========================================================================
3358 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3359 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3361 This package began as the union of the following:
3362 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3364 ========================================================================
3366 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3368 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3369 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3370 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3371 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3372 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3373 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.