1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-17) [unstable]
7 chgrp and chown no longer affect symbolic links by default.
8 Now, they operate on whatever a symbolic points to, instead.
9 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
11 chown --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
12 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
14 rm no longer required read access to the current directory.
16 For some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
17 when first encountering a directory, `rm -r' would mistakenly fail
18 to remove files under that directory.
20 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
21 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
23 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
24 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
26 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1
30 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
31 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
32 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
33 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
34 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
36 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
37 is longer than PATH_MAX.
39 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
40 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
41 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
42 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
43 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
45 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
47 nocreat do not create the output file
48 excl fail if the output file already exists
49 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
50 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
52 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
54 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
55 direct use direct I/O for data
56 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
57 sync likewise, but also for metadata
58 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
59 nofollow do not follow symlinks
61 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
63 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
64 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
67 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
68 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
69 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
70 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
71 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
72 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
74 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
75 list of NUL-terminated file names.
77 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
78 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
79 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
81 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
82 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
84 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
85 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
88 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
92 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
93 or more arguments between partitions.
95 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
96 holes in the destination.
98 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
99 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
100 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
101 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
102 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
103 terminates immediately.
105 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
107 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
109 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
110 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
111 not the empty string.
113 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
114 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
118 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
119 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
120 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
123 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
130 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
134 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
135 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
137 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
138 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
140 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
141 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
142 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
145 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
149 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
150 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
152 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
153 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
155 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
156 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
157 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
159 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
161 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
164 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
166 ** Configuration option
168 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
169 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
173 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
174 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
178 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
179 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
180 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
183 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
184 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
185 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
186 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
187 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
188 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
191 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
195 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
196 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
197 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
199 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
200 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
202 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
204 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
205 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
206 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
207 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
209 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
211 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
212 not just the ones that reference directories
214 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
215 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
217 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
218 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
219 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
221 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
222 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
223 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
224 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
225 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
226 ragged when a datum was too wide.
228 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
233 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
234 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
236 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
238 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
240 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
242 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
243 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
245 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
246 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
248 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
250 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
254 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
256 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
258 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
259 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
260 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
261 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
262 resolution is the best we can do right now.
264 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
265 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
267 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
268 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
270 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
271 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
273 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
274 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
275 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
279 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
280 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
281 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
282 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
283 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
284 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
285 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
286 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
287 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
288 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
289 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
290 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
291 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
292 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
294 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
296 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
297 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
299 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
301 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
303 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
304 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
306 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
308 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
309 without a trailing newline.
311 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
312 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
314 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
317 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
321 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
323 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
325 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
326 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
327 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
328 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
330 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
332 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
333 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
334 be printed without leading spaces.
336 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
337 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
342 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
343 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
344 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
346 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
348 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
349 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
351 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
352 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
354 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
355 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
357 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
359 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
361 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
363 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
364 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
366 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
368 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
370 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
371 byte offsets are specified.
374 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
377 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
380 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
381 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
382 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
383 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
384 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
385 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
386 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
387 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
388 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
389 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
390 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
391 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
392 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
393 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
394 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
395 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
396 directory where M has write access.
397 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
398 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
399 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
402 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
403 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
404 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
405 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
406 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
407 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
408 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
409 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
410 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
411 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
412 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
413 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
414 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
415 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
416 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
417 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
418 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
419 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
420 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
421 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
422 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
423 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
424 appeared one additional time.
426 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
427 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
428 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
429 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
432 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
433 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
434 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
435 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
436 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
437 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
438 if there were more than 338.
440 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
441 - false --help now exits nonzero
444 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
445 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
446 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
447 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
450 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
451 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
452 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
453 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
454 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
457 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
458 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
459 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
460 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
461 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
462 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
463 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
466 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
467 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
468 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
469 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
470 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
471 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
473 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
474 under certain unusual conditions
475 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
476 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
479 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
480 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
481 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
482 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
483 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
484 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
485 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
486 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
487 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
488 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
489 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
490 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
491 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
492 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
493 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
494 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
497 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
498 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
501 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
502 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
503 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
504 involving hard-linked directories
505 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
506 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
507 character-special and block files
510 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
511 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
512 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
513 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
514 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
515 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
516 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
517 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
518 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
520 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
521 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
522 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
523 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
524 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
525 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
526 specified on the command line.
527 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
528 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
529 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
530 the first file untouched.
531 * readlink: new program
532 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
533 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
534 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
535 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
536 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
537 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
540 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
541 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
542 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
543 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
544 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
545 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
546 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
547 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
548 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
549 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
550 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
551 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
553 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
554 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
555 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
557 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
558 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
559 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
560 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
561 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
562 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
563 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
564 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
567 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
568 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
571 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
572 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
573 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
574 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
575 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
576 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
577 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
580 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
581 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
583 ========================================================================
584 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
585 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
588 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
590 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
591 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
592 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
593 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
594 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
595 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
596 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
597 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
598 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
599 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
600 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
601 The old options will continue to work for a while.
603 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
604 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
605 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
606 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
608 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
611 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
613 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
614 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
615 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
616 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
617 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
618 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
619 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
622 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
623 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
624 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
625 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
626 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
627 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
628 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
629 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
630 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
631 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
632 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
633 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
634 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
635 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
636 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
637 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
639 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
640 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
642 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
643 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
644 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
645 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
646 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
647 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
649 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
650 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
651 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
652 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
653 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
654 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
655 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
657 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
658 the source files in the following example:
659 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
660 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
661 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
662 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
663 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
664 links between source files with --preserve=links
665 * cp accepts new options:
666 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
667 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
668 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
669 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
670 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
671 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
672 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
673 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
674 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
676 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
677 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
678 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
679 even though it's older than dest.
680 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
681 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
682 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
683 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
684 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
686 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
687 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
688 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
689 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
690 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
691 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
692 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
694 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
695 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
696 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
698 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
699 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
700 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
701 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
702 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
705 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
706 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
707 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
708 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
709 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
711 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
714 ========================================================================
715 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
716 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
719 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
720 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
722 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
723 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
724 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
725 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
726 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
728 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
729 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
730 that specifies a non-directory
733 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
734 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
735 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
736 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
737 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
738 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
739 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
740 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
741 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
742 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
743 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
744 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
745 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
746 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
747 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
748 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
749 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
750 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
751 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
752 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
753 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
754 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
755 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
756 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
758 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
759 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
760 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
762 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
764 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
765 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
767 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
768 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
769 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
770 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
771 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
773 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
774 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
775 required support; from Bruno Haible.
776 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
777 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
779 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
781 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
782 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
783 * still more portability fixes
784 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
785 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
787 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
789 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
791 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
793 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
794 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
795 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
796 there is any time remaining
797 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
799 ========================================================================
800 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
801 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
803 This package began as the union of the following:
804 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
projects / platform / upstream / coreutils.git / blob