1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (2006-??-??) [unstable]
7 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
8 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
10 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
11 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
13 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
14 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
16 ** Changes in behavior
18 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
19 where the two are distinct.
21 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
22 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
23 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
24 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
27 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
28 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
29 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by chrooted
30 bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
32 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
33 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
34 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
35 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
36 used only for internal errors like arithmetic overflow.
38 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
39 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
40 successful and the output is easier to parse.
42 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
43 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
44 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
45 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
47 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
48 and sticky) with the -m option.
50 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
51 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
52 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
53 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
54 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
56 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
57 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
59 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
60 silently ignoring one of them.
62 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
63 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
64 containing this change was 5.92.
66 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
67 automatically newline terminated.
69 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
70 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
71 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
72 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
75 ** Scheduled for removal
77 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
78 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
80 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
81 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
82 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
83 command to unlink a directory.
85 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
86 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
87 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
88 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
92 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
93 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
94 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
95 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
96 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
100 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
102 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
103 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
104 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
106 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
107 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
110 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
111 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
113 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
114 list directories before files.
116 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
117 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
118 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
119 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
122 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option,
123 as well as the --seed=STRING option.
127 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
128 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
129 them with hard-linked directories.
131 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
132 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
133 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
135 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
136 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
137 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
139 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
140 all command-line arguments.
142 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
144 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
146 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
147 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
149 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
150 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
151 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
152 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
153 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
155 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
156 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
158 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
162 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
163 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
165 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
166 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
168 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
169 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
171 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
172 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
174 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
175 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
177 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
179 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
180 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
181 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
184 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
186 ** Build-related bug fixes
188 installing .mo files would fail
191 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
195 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
197 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
200 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
204 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
205 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
209 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
211 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
212 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
214 ** Deprecated options
216 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
217 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
219 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
223 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
225 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
226 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
227 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
228 conforming to older POSIX versions.
230 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
233 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
239 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
244 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
246 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
248 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
249 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
250 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
252 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
253 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
254 problematic usages. These include:
256 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
257 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
258 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
259 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
260 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
261 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
262 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
263 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
264 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
266 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
267 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
269 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
270 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
271 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
272 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
274 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
275 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
276 between binary and text files.
278 The following programs now always use text input/output:
282 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
286 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
287 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
290 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
292 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
293 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
295 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
296 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
297 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
299 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
301 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
303 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
304 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
305 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
309 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
311 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
312 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
314 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
315 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
316 blocks until F contains N blocks.
320 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
321 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
325 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
326 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
327 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
331 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
332 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
336 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
338 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
340 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
344 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
345 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
346 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
348 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
349 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
350 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
351 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
352 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
354 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
358 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
359 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
360 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
362 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
364 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
365 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
366 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
367 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
369 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
371 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
372 rather than silently wrapping around.
374 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
375 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
377 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
378 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
380 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
381 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
382 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
385 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
387 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
389 ** Improved robustness
391 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
392 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
393 no matter how large the result.
395 ** Improved portability
397 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
398 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
400 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
402 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
403 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
404 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
406 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
407 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
411 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
412 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
414 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
416 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
417 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
418 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
419 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
421 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
422 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
424 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
425 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
426 categories if not specified by dircolors.
428 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
430 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
431 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
433 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
434 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
436 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
438 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
439 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
441 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
442 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
444 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
445 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
446 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
448 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
450 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
452 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
456 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
458 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
459 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
460 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
462 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
463 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
465 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
466 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
467 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
469 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
470 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
472 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
473 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
474 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
475 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
477 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
478 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
480 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
481 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
482 the file system does not support it.
484 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
486 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
487 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
489 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
491 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
492 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
494 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
495 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
496 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
497 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
499 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
500 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
503 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
504 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
505 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
506 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
508 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
509 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
510 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
511 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
513 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
514 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
516 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
518 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
519 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
520 reporting incorrect results.
524 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
525 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
527 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
530 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
532 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
533 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
535 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
536 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
538 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
541 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
542 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
543 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
544 the file name does not look like a page range.
546 printf has several changes:
548 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
549 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
551 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
552 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
553 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
555 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
556 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
559 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
560 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
562 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
563 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
565 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
567 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
568 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
570 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
572 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
574 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
575 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
576 when first encountering the directory.
580 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
581 output; POSIX requires this.
583 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
584 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
586 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
588 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
589 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
591 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
592 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
594 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
595 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
596 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
597 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
598 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
599 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
600 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
602 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
603 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
604 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
606 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
607 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
609 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
611 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
613 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
614 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
615 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
616 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
618 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
622 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
623 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
624 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
625 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
626 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
628 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
629 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
630 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
632 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
633 is longer than PATH_MAX.
635 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
636 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
638 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
639 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
640 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
641 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
642 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
644 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
645 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
647 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
648 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
650 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
652 nocreat do not create the output file
653 excl fail if the output file already exists
654 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
655 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
657 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
659 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
660 direct use direct I/O for data
661 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
662 sync likewise, but also for metadata
663 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
664 nofollow do not follow symlinks
665 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
667 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
669 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
670 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
673 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
674 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
675 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
676 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
677 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
678 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
680 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
681 list of NUL-terminated file names.
683 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
686 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
688 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
690 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
691 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
693 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
694 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
695 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
697 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
698 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
699 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
701 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
703 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
704 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
706 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
707 for compatibility with bash.
709 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
711 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
712 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
713 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
714 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
716 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
717 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
719 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
721 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
722 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
723 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
725 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
728 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
730 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
731 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
732 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
733 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
734 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
735 an offset, not as a file name.
737 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
738 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
740 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
741 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
743 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
744 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
746 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
747 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
748 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
750 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
751 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
753 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
754 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
758 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
760 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
762 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
766 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
767 or more arguments between partitions.
769 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
770 holes in the destination.
772 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
773 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
774 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
775 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
776 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
777 terminates immediately.
779 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
781 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
783 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
784 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
785 not the empty string.
787 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
788 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
792 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
793 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
794 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
797 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
804 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
808 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
809 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
811 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
812 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
814 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
815 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
816 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
819 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
823 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
824 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
826 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
827 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
829 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
830 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
831 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
833 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
835 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
838 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
840 ** Configuration option
842 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
843 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
847 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
848 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
852 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
853 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
854 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
857 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
858 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
859 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
860 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
861 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
862 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
863 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
866 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
870 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
871 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
872 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
874 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
875 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
877 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
879 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
880 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
881 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
882 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
884 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
886 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
887 not just the ones that reference directories
889 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
890 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
892 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
893 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
894 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
896 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
897 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
898 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
899 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
900 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
901 ragged when a datum was too wide.
903 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
908 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
909 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
911 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
913 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
915 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
917 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
918 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
920 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
921 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
923 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
925 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
929 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
931 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
933 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
934 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
935 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
936 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
937 resolution is the best we can do right now.
939 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
940 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
942 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
943 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
945 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
946 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
948 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
949 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
950 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
954 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
955 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
956 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
957 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
958 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
959 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
960 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
961 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
962 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
963 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
964 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
965 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
966 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
967 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
969 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
971 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
972 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
974 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
976 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
978 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
979 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
981 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
983 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
984 without a trailing newline.
986 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
987 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
989 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
992 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
996 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
998 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1000 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1001 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1002 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1003 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1005 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1007 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1008 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1009 be printed without leading spaces.
1011 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1012 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1017 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1018 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1019 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1021 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1023 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1024 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1026 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1027 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1029 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1030 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1032 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1034 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1036 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1038 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1039 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1041 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1043 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1045 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1046 byte offsets are specified.
1049 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1052 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1055 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1056 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1057 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1058 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1059 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1060 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1061 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1062 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1063 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1064 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1065 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1066 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1067 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1068 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1069 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1070 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1071 directory where M has write access.
1072 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1073 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1074 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1077 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1078 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1079 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1080 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1081 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1082 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1083 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1084 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1085 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1086 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1087 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1088 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1089 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1090 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1091 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1092 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1093 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1094 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1095 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1096 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1097 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1098 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1099 appeared one additional time.
1101 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1102 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1103 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1104 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1107 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1108 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1109 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1110 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1111 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1112 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1113 if there were more than 338.
1115 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1116 - false --help now exits nonzero
1119 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1120 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1121 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1122 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1125 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1126 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1127 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1128 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1129 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1132 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1133 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1134 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1135 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1136 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1137 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1138 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1141 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1142 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1143 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1144 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1145 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1146 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1148 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1149 under certain unusual conditions
1150 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1151 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1154 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1155 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1156 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1157 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1158 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1159 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1160 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1161 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1162 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1163 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1164 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1165 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1166 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1167 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1168 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1169 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1172 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1173 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1176 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1177 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1178 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1179 involving hard-linked directories
1180 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1181 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1182 character-special and block files
1185 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1186 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1187 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1188 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1189 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1190 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1191 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1192 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1193 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1195 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1196 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1197 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1198 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1199 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1200 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1201 specified on the command line.
1202 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1203 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1204 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1205 the first file untouched.
1206 * readlink: new program
1207 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1208 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1209 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1210 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1211 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1212 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1215 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1216 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1217 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1218 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1219 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1220 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1221 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1222 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1223 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1224 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1225 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1226 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1228 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1229 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1230 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1232 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1233 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1234 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1235 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1236 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1237 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1238 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1239 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1242 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1243 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1246 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1247 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1248 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1249 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1250 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1251 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1252 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1255 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1256 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1258 ========================================================================
1259 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1260 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1263 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1265 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1266 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1267 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1268 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1269 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1270 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1271 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1272 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1273 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1274 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1275 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1276 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1278 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1279 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1280 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1281 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1283 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1286 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1288 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1289 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1290 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1291 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1292 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1293 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1294 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1297 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1298 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1299 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1300 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1301 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1302 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1303 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1304 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1305 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1306 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1307 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1308 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1309 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1310 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1311 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1312 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1314 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1315 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1317 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1318 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1319 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1320 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1321 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1322 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1324 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1325 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1326 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1327 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1328 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1329 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1330 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1332 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1333 the source files in the following example:
1334 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1335 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1336 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1337 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1338 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1339 links between source files with --preserve=links
1340 * cp accepts new options:
1341 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1342 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1343 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1344 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1345 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1346 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1347 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1348 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1349 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1351 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1352 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1353 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1354 even though it's older than dest.
1355 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1356 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1357 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1358 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1359 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1361 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1362 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1363 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1364 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1365 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1366 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1367 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1369 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1370 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1371 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1373 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1374 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1375 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1376 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1377 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1378 This is the default.
1380 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1381 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1382 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1383 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1384 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1386 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1389 ========================================================================
1390 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1391 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1394 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1395 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1397 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1398 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1399 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1400 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1401 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1403 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1404 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1405 that specifies a non-directory
1408 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1409 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1410 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1411 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1412 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1413 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1414 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1415 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1416 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1417 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1418 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1419 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1420 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1421 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1422 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1423 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1424 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1425 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1426 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1427 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1428 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1429 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1430 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1431 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1433 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1434 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1435 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1437 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1439 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1440 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1442 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1443 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1444 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1445 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1446 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1448 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1449 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1450 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1451 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1452 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1454 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1456 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1457 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1458 * still more portability fixes
1459 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1460 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1462 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1464 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1466 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1468 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1469 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1470 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1471 there is any time remaining
1472 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1474 ========================================================================
1475 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1476 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1478 This package began as the union of the following:
1479 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.