1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8+ (????-??-??) [not-unstable]
7 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
9 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
10 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
11 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
13 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
17 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
18 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
20 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
21 support but with insufficient /proc support.
23 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
24 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
26 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
27 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
28 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
29 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
30 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
31 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
33 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
34 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
37 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
38 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
40 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
43 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
44 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
45 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
47 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
48 directory is unreadable.
50 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
51 Before it would print nothing.
53 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
57 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
58 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
59 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
61 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
62 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
63 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
64 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
67 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
71 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
72 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
73 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
74 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
75 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
76 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
77 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
79 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
80 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
81 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
82 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
83 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
84 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
85 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
86 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
88 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
89 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
90 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
93 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
97 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
98 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
100 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
101 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
102 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
104 ** Improved robustness
106 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
107 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
108 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
111 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
115 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
116 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
117 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
118 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
119 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
121 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
125 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
128 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
132 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
133 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
134 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
135 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
137 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
138 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
140 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
141 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
142 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
145 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
147 ** Improved robustness
149 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
150 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
152 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
153 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
154 or NFS-mounted partition.
156 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
157 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
161 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
162 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
163 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
164 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
165 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
166 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
168 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
169 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
171 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
172 or neglect to report file removal.
174 For the "groups" command:
176 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
177 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
179 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
181 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
183 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
187 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
188 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
191 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
193 ** Changes in behavior
195 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
196 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
197 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
198 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
200 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
201 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
202 a final `./' or `../' component.
204 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
205 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
208 ** Infrastructure changes
210 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
211 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
212 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
213 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
217 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
220 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
221 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
222 dirent.d_type support.
224 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
225 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
227 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
228 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
229 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
230 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
233 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
235 ** Changes in behavior
237 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
241 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
242 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
246 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
247 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
248 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
250 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
251 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
253 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
254 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
256 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
258 ** Improved robustness
260 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
261 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
262 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
264 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
265 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
268 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
269 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
271 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
272 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
274 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
275 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
277 ** Changes in behavior
279 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
280 where the two are distinct.
282 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
283 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
284 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
285 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
286 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
287 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
288 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
289 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
290 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
291 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
292 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
293 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
294 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
295 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
296 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
297 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
298 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
300 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
301 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
302 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
304 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
305 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
306 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
307 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
310 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
311 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
315 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
316 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
317 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
318 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
320 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
321 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
322 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
324 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
325 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
326 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
327 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
328 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
331 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
332 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
334 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
335 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
336 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
337 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
339 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
340 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
341 successful and the output is easier to parse.
343 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
344 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
345 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
346 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
348 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
349 and sticky) with the -m option.
351 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
352 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
353 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
354 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
355 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
357 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
358 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
360 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
364 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
365 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
366 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
367 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
369 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
371 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
373 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
374 silently ignoring one of them.
376 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
377 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
378 containing this change was 5.92.
380 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
381 automatically newline terminated.
383 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
384 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
385 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
386 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
389 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
390 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
391 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
394 ** Scheduled for removal
396 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
397 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
399 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
400 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
401 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
402 command to unlink a directory.
404 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
405 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
406 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
407 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
411 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
412 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
413 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
414 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
415 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
416 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
420 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
421 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
423 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
425 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
426 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
427 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
429 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
430 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
433 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
434 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
436 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
437 list directories before files.
439 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
440 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
441 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
442 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
445 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
447 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
449 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
450 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
451 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
453 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
454 list of NUL-terminated file names.
458 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
459 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
460 usually printing nothing.
462 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
464 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
465 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
466 them with hard-linked directories.
468 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
469 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
470 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
472 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
473 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
474 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
476 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
479 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
480 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
482 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
483 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
485 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
486 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
488 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
489 all command-line arguments.
491 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
493 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
495 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
496 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
498 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
500 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
501 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
502 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
503 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
504 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
506 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
507 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
509 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
510 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
511 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
512 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
514 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
516 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
520 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
521 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
523 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
524 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
526 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
527 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
529 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
530 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
532 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
533 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
535 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
537 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
538 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
539 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
542 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
544 ** Build-related bug fixes
546 installing .mo files would fail
549 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
553 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
555 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
558 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
562 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
563 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
567 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
569 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
570 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
572 ** Deprecated options
574 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
575 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
577 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
581 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
583 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
584 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
585 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
586 conforming to older POSIX versions.
588 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
591 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
597 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
602 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
604 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
606 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
607 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
608 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
610 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
611 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
612 problematic usages. These include:
614 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
615 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
616 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
617 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
618 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
619 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
620 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
621 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
622 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
624 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
625 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
627 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
628 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
629 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
630 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
632 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
633 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
634 between binary and text files.
636 The following programs now always use text input/output:
640 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
644 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
645 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
648 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
650 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
651 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
653 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
654 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
655 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
657 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
659 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
661 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
662 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
663 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
667 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
669 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
670 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
672 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
673 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
674 blocks until F contains N blocks.
678 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
679 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
683 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
684 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
685 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
689 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
690 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
694 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
696 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
698 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
702 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
703 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
704 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
706 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
707 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
708 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
709 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
710 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
712 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
716 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
717 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
718 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
720 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
722 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
723 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
724 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
725 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
727 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
729 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
730 rather than silently wrapping around.
732 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
733 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
735 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
736 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
738 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
739 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
740 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
743 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
745 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
747 ** Improved robustness
749 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
750 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
751 no matter how large the result.
753 ** Improved portability
755 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
756 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
758 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
760 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
761 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
762 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
764 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
765 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
769 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
770 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
772 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
774 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
775 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
776 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
777 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
779 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
780 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
782 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
783 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
784 categories if not specified by dircolors.
786 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
788 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
789 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
791 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
792 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
794 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
796 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
797 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
799 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
800 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
802 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
803 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
804 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
806 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
808 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
810 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
814 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
816 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
817 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
818 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
820 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
821 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
823 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
824 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
825 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
827 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
828 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
830 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
831 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
832 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
833 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
835 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
836 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
838 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
839 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
840 the file system does not support it.
842 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
844 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
845 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
847 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
849 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
850 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
852 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
853 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
854 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
855 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
857 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
858 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
861 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
862 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
863 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
864 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
866 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
867 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
868 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
869 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
871 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
872 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
874 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
876 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
877 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
878 reporting incorrect results.
882 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
883 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
885 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
888 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
890 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
891 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
893 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
894 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
896 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
899 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
900 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
901 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
902 the file name does not look like a page range.
904 printf has several changes:
906 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
907 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
909 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
910 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
911 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
913 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
914 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
917 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
918 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
920 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
921 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
923 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
925 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
926 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
928 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
930 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
932 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
933 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
934 when first encountering the directory.
938 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
939 output; POSIX requires this.
941 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
942 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
944 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
946 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
947 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
949 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
950 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
952 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
953 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
954 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
955 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
956 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
957 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
958 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
960 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
961 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
962 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
964 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
965 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
967 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
969 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
971 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
972 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
973 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
974 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
976 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
980 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
981 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
982 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
983 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
984 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
986 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
987 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
988 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
990 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
991 is longer than PATH_MAX.
993 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
994 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
996 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
997 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
998 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
999 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1000 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1002 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1003 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1005 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1006 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1008 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1010 nocreat do not create the output file
1011 excl fail if the output file already exists
1012 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1013 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1015 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1017 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1018 direct use direct I/O for data
1019 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1020 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1021 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1022 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1023 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1025 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1027 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1028 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1031 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1032 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1033 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1034 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1035 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1036 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1038 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1039 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1041 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1044 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1046 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1048 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1049 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1051 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1052 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1053 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1055 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1056 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1057 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1059 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1061 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1062 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1064 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1065 for compatibility with bash.
1067 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1069 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1070 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1071 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1072 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1074 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1075 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1077 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1078 ls supports TABSIZE.
1079 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1080 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1081 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1083 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1086 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1088 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1089 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1090 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1091 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1092 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1093 an offset, not as a file name.
1095 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1096 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1098 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1099 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1101 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1102 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1104 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1105 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1106 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1108 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1109 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1111 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1112 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1116 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1118 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1120 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1124 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1125 or more arguments between partitions.
1127 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1128 holes in the destination.
1130 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1131 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1132 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1133 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1134 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1135 terminates immediately.
1137 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1139 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1141 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1142 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1143 not the empty string.
1145 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1146 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1150 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1151 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1152 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1155 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1162 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1166 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1167 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1169 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1170 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1172 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1173 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1174 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1177 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1181 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1182 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1184 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1185 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1187 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1188 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1189 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1191 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1193 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1196 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1198 ** Configuration option
1200 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1201 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1205 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1206 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1210 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1211 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1212 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1215 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1216 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1217 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1218 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1219 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1220 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1221 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1224 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1228 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1229 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1230 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1232 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1233 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1235 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1237 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1238 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1239 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1240 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1242 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1244 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1245 not just the ones that reference directories
1247 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1248 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1250 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1251 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1252 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1254 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1255 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1256 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1257 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1258 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1259 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1261 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1266 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1267 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1269 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1271 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1273 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1275 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1276 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1278 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1279 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1281 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1283 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1287 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1289 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1291 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1292 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1293 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1294 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1295 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1297 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1298 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1300 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1301 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1303 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1304 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1306 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1307 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1308 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1312 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1313 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1314 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1315 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1316 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1317 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1318 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1319 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1320 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1321 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1322 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1323 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1324 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1325 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1327 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1329 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1330 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1332 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1334 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1336 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1337 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1339 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1341 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1342 without a trailing newline.
1344 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1345 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1347 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1350 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1354 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1356 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1358 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1359 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1360 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1361 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1363 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1365 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1366 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1367 be printed without leading spaces.
1369 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1370 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1375 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1376 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1377 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1379 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1381 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1382 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1384 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1385 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1387 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1388 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1390 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1392 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1394 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1396 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1397 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1399 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1401 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1403 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1404 byte offsets are specified.
1407 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1410 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1413 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1414 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1415 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1416 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1417 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1418 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1419 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1420 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1421 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1422 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1423 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1424 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1425 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1426 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1427 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1428 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1429 directory where M has write access.
1430 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1431 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1432 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1435 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1436 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1437 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1438 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1439 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1440 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1441 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1442 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1443 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1444 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1445 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1446 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1447 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1448 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1449 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1450 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1451 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1452 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1453 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1454 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1455 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1456 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1457 appeared one additional time.
1459 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1460 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1461 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1462 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1465 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1466 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1467 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1468 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1469 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1470 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1471 if there were more than 338.
1473 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1474 - false --help now exits nonzero
1477 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1478 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1479 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1480 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1483 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1484 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1485 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1486 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1487 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1490 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1491 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1492 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1493 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1494 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1495 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1496 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1499 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1500 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1501 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1502 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1503 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1504 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1506 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1507 under certain unusual conditions
1508 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1509 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1512 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1513 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1514 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1515 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1516 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1517 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1518 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1519 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1520 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1521 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1522 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1523 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1524 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1525 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1526 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1527 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1530 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1531 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1534 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1535 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1536 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1537 involving hard-linked directories
1538 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1539 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1540 character-special and block files
1543 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1544 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1545 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1546 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1547 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1548 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1549 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1550 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1551 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1553 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1554 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1555 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1556 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1557 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1558 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1559 specified on the command line.
1560 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1561 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1562 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1563 the first file untouched.
1564 * readlink: new program
1565 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1566 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1567 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1568 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1569 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1570 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1573 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1574 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1575 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1576 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1577 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1578 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1579 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1580 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1581 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1582 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1583 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1584 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1586 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1587 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1588 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1590 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1591 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1592 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1593 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1594 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1595 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1596 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1597 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1600 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1601 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1604 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1605 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1606 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1607 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1608 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1609 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1610 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1613 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1614 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1616 ========================================================================
1617 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1618 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1621 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1623 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1624 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1625 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1626 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1627 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1628 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1629 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1630 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1631 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1632 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1633 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1634 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1636 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1637 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1638 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1639 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1641 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1644 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1646 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1647 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1648 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1649 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1650 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1651 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1652 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1655 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1656 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1657 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1658 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1659 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1660 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1661 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1662 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1663 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1664 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1665 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1666 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1667 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1668 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1669 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1670 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1672 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1673 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1675 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1676 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1677 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1678 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1679 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1680 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1682 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1683 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1684 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1685 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1686 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1687 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1688 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1690 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1691 the source files in the following example:
1692 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1693 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1694 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1695 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1696 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1697 links between source files with --preserve=links
1698 * cp accepts new options:
1699 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1700 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1701 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1702 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1703 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1704 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1705 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1706 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1707 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1709 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1710 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1711 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1712 even though it's older than dest.
1713 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1714 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1715 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1716 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1717 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1719 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1720 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1721 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1722 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1723 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1724 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1725 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1727 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1728 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1729 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1731 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1732 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1733 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1734 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1735 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1736 This is the default.
1738 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1739 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1740 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1741 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1742 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1744 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1747 ========================================================================
1748 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1749 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1752 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1753 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1755 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1756 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1757 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1758 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1759 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1761 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1762 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1763 that specifies a non-directory
1766 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1767 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1768 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1769 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1770 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1771 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1772 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1773 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1774 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1775 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1776 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1777 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1778 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1779 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1780 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1781 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1782 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1783 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1784 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1785 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1786 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1787 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1788 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1789 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1791 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1792 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1793 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1795 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1797 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1798 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1800 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1801 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1802 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1803 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1804 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1806 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1807 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1808 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1809 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1810 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1812 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1814 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1815 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1816 * still more portability fixes
1817 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1818 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1820 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1822 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1824 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1826 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1827 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1828 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1829 there is any time remaining
1830 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1832 ========================================================================
1833 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1834 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1836 This package began as the union of the following:
1837 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1839 ========================================================================
1841 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1844 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1845 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1846 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1847 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1848 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1849 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.