1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
7 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
9 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
10 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
11 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
13 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
14 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
16 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
17 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
18 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
20 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
21 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
23 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
24 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
25 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
26 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
28 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
29 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
31 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
32 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
33 the file system does not support it.
35 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
37 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
38 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
40 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
42 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
43 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
45 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
46 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
47 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
48 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
50 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
51 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
54 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
55 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
56 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
57 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
59 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
60 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
61 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
62 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
64 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
65 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
67 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
69 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
70 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
71 reporting incorrect results.
75 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
76 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
78 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
79 value happens to be -1.
81 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
83 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
84 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
86 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
87 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
89 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
92 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
93 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
94 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
95 the file name does not look like a page range.
97 printf has several changes:
99 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
100 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
102 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
103 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
104 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
106 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
107 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
110 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
111 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
113 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
114 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
116 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
117 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
119 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
121 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
123 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
124 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
125 when first encountering the directory.
129 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
130 output; POSIX requires this.
132 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
133 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
135 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
137 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
138 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
140 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
141 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
143 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
144 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
145 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
146 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
147 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
148 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
149 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
151 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
152 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
153 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
155 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
156 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
158 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
160 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
162 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
163 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
164 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
165 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
167 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
171 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
172 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
173 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
174 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
175 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
177 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
178 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
179 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
181 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
182 is longer than PATH_MAX.
184 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
185 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
187 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
188 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
189 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
190 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
191 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
193 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
194 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
196 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
197 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
199 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
201 nocreat do not create the output file
202 excl fail if the output file already exists
203 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
204 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
206 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
208 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
209 direct use direct I/O for data
210 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
211 sync likewise, but also for metadata
212 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
213 nofollow do not follow symlinks
214 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
216 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
218 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
219 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
222 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
223 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
224 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
225 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
226 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
227 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
229 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
230 list of NUL-terminated file names.
232 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
235 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
237 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
239 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
240 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
242 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
243 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
244 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
246 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
247 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
248 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
250 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
252 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
253 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
255 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
256 for compatibility with bash.
258 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
260 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
261 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
262 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
263 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
265 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
266 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
268 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
270 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
271 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
272 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
274 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
277 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
279 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
280 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
281 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
282 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
283 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
284 an offset, not as a file name.
286 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
287 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
289 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
290 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
292 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
293 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
295 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
296 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
297 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
299 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
300 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
304 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
306 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
308 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
312 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
313 or more arguments between partitions.
315 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
316 holes in the destination.
318 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
319 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
320 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
321 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
322 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
323 terminates immediately.
325 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
327 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
329 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
330 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
331 not the empty string.
333 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
334 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
338 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
339 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
340 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
343 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
350 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
354 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
355 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
357 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
358 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
360 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
361 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
362 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
365 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
369 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
370 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
372 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
373 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
375 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
376 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
377 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
379 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
381 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
384 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
386 ** Configuration option
388 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
389 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
393 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
394 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
398 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
399 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
400 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
403 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
404 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
405 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
406 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
407 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
408 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
411 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
415 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
416 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
417 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
419 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
420 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
422 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
424 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
425 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
426 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
427 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
429 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
431 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
432 not just the ones that reference directories
434 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
435 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
437 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
438 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
439 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
441 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
442 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
443 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
444 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
445 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
446 ragged when a datum was too wide.
448 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
453 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
454 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
456 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
458 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
460 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
462 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
463 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
465 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
466 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
468 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
470 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
474 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
476 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
478 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
479 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
480 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
481 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
482 resolution is the best we can do right now.
484 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
485 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
487 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
488 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
490 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
491 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
493 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
494 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
495 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
499 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
500 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
501 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
502 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
503 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
504 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
505 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
506 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
507 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
508 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
509 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
510 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
511 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
512 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
514 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
516 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
517 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
519 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
521 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
523 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
524 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
526 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
528 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
529 without a trailing newline.
531 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
532 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
534 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
537 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
541 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
543 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
545 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
546 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
547 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
548 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
550 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
552 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
553 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
554 be printed without leading spaces.
556 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
557 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
562 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
563 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
564 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
566 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
568 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
569 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
571 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
572 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
574 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
575 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
577 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
579 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
581 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
583 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
584 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
586 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
588 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
590 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
591 byte offsets are specified.
594 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
597 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
600 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
601 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
602 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
603 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
604 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
605 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
606 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
607 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
608 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
609 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
610 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
611 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
612 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
613 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
614 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
615 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
616 directory where M has write access.
617 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
618 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
619 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
622 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
623 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
624 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
625 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
626 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
627 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
628 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
629 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
630 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
631 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
632 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
633 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
634 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
635 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
636 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
637 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
638 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
639 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
640 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
641 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
642 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
643 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
644 appeared one additional time.
646 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
647 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
648 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
649 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
652 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
653 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
654 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
655 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
656 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
657 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
658 if there were more than 338.
660 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
661 - false --help now exits nonzero
664 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
665 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
666 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
667 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
670 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
671 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
672 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
673 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
674 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
677 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
678 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
679 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
680 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
681 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
682 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
683 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
686 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
687 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
688 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
689 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
690 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
691 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
693 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
694 under certain unusual conditions
695 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
696 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
699 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
700 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
701 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
702 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
703 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
704 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
705 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
706 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
707 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
708 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
709 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
710 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
711 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
712 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
713 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
714 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
717 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
718 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
721 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
722 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
723 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
724 involving hard-linked directories
725 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
726 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
727 character-special and block files
730 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
731 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
732 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
733 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
734 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
735 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
736 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
737 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
738 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
740 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
741 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
742 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
743 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
744 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
745 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
746 specified on the command line.
747 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
748 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
749 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
750 the first file untouched.
751 * readlink: new program
752 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
753 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
754 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
755 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
756 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
757 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
760 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
761 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
762 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
763 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
764 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
765 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
766 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
767 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
768 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
769 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
770 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
771 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
773 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
774 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
775 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
777 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
778 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
779 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
780 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
781 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
782 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
783 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
784 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
787 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
788 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
791 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
792 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
793 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
794 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
795 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
796 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
797 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
800 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
801 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
803 ========================================================================
804 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
805 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
808 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
810 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
811 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
812 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
813 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
814 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
815 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
816 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
817 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
818 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
819 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
820 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
821 The old options will continue to work for a while.
823 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
824 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
825 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
826 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
828 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
831 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
833 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
834 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
835 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
836 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
837 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
838 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
839 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
842 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
843 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
844 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
845 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
846 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
847 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
848 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
849 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
850 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
851 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
852 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
853 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
854 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
855 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
856 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
857 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
859 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
860 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
862 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
863 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
864 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
865 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
866 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
867 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
869 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
870 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
871 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
872 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
873 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
874 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
875 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
877 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
878 the source files in the following example:
879 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
880 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
881 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
882 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
883 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
884 links between source files with --preserve=links
885 * cp accepts new options:
886 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
887 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
888 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
889 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
890 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
891 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
892 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
893 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
894 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
896 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
897 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
898 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
899 even though it's older than dest.
900 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
901 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
902 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
903 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
904 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
906 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
907 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
908 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
909 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
910 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
911 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
912 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
914 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
915 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
916 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
918 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
919 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
920 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
921 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
922 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
925 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
926 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
927 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
928 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
929 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
931 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
934 ========================================================================
935 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
936 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
939 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
940 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
942 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
943 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
944 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
945 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
946 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
948 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
949 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
950 that specifies a non-directory
953 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
954 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
955 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
956 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
957 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
958 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
959 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
960 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
961 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
962 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
963 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
964 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
965 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
966 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
967 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
968 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
969 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
970 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
971 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
972 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
973 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
974 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
975 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
976 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
978 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
979 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
980 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
982 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
984 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
985 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
987 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
988 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
989 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
990 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
991 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
993 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
994 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
995 required support; from Bruno Haible.
996 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
997 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
999 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1001 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1002 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1003 * still more portability fixes
1004 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1005 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1007 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1009 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1011 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1013 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1014 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1015 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1016 there is any time remaining
1017 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1019 ========================================================================
1020 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1021 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1023 This package began as the union of the following:
1024 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
projects / platform / upstream / coreutils.git / blob