1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 ** Changes in behavior
12 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
13 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
15 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
16 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
17 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
21 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
23 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
24 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
25 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
27 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
28 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
29 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
34 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
35 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
36 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
37 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
39 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
40 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
41 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
42 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
43 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
44 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
47 ** Remove deprecated options
49 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
50 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
51 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
52 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
53 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
57 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
58 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
59 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
60 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
62 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
63 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
64 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
65 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
66 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
67 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
68 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
69 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
70 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
71 the destination is a symlink.
73 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
75 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
76 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
78 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
80 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
81 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
83 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
84 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
86 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
87 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
88 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
89 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
91 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
92 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
93 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
95 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
96 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
98 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
99 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
100 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
102 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
103 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
105 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
106 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
108 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
109 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
111 ** Improved robustness
113 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
114 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
117 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
121 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
123 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
124 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
125 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
127 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
128 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
130 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
134 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
135 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
137 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
138 support but with insufficient /proc support.
140 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
141 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
143 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
144 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
145 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
146 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
147 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
148 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
150 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
151 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
154 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
155 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
157 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
160 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
161 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
162 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
164 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
165 directory is unreadable.
167 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
168 Before it would print nothing.
170 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
174 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
175 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
176 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
178 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
179 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
180 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
181 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
184 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
188 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
189 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
190 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
191 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
192 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
193 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
194 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
196 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
197 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
198 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
199 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
200 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
201 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
202 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
203 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
205 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
206 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
207 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
210 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
214 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
215 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
217 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
218 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
219 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
221 ** Improved robustness
223 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
224 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
225 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
228 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
232 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
233 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
234 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
235 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
236 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
238 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
242 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
245 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
249 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
250 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
251 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
252 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
254 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
255 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
257 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
258 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
259 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
262 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
264 ** Improved robustness
266 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
267 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
269 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
270 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
271 or NFS-mounted partition.
273 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
274 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
278 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
279 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
280 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
281 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
282 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
283 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
285 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
286 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
288 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
289 or neglect to report file removal.
291 For the "groups" command:
293 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
294 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
296 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
298 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
300 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
304 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
305 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
308 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
310 ** Changes in behavior
312 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
313 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
314 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
315 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
317 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
318 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
319 a final `./' or `../' component.
321 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
322 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
325 ** Infrastructure changes
327 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
328 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
329 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
330 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
334 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
337 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
338 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
339 dirent.d_type support.
341 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
342 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
344 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
345 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
346 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
347 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
350 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
352 ** Changes in behavior
354 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
358 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
359 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
363 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
364 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
365 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
367 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
368 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
370 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
371 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
373 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
375 ** Improved robustness
377 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
378 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
379 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
381 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
382 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
385 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
386 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
388 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
389 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
391 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
392 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
394 ** Changes in behavior
396 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
397 where the two are distinct.
399 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
400 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
401 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
402 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
403 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
404 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
405 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
406 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
407 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
408 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
409 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
410 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
411 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
412 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
413 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
414 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
415 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
417 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
418 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
419 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
421 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
422 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
423 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
424 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
427 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
428 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
432 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
433 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
434 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
435 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
437 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
438 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
439 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
441 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
442 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
443 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
444 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
445 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
448 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
449 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
451 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
452 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
453 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
454 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
456 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
457 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
458 successful and the output is easier to parse.
460 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
461 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
462 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
463 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
465 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
466 and sticky) with the -m option.
468 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
469 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
470 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
471 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
472 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
474 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
475 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
477 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
481 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
482 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
483 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
484 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
486 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
488 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
490 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
491 silently ignoring one of them.
493 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
494 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
495 containing this change was 5.92.
497 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
498 automatically newline terminated.
500 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
501 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
502 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
503 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
506 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
507 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
508 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
511 ** Scheduled for removal
513 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
514 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
516 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
517 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
518 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
519 command to unlink a directory.
521 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
522 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
523 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
524 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
528 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
529 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
530 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
531 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
532 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
533 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
537 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
538 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
540 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
542 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
543 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
544 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
546 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
547 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
550 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
551 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
553 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
554 list directories before files.
556 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
557 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
558 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
559 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
562 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
564 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
566 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
567 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
568 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
570 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
571 list of NUL-terminated file names.
575 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
576 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
577 usually printing nothing.
579 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
581 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
582 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
583 them with hard-linked directories.
585 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
586 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
587 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
589 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
590 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
591 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
593 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
596 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
597 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
599 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
600 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
602 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
603 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
605 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
606 all command-line arguments.
608 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
610 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
612 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
613 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
615 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
617 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
618 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
619 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
620 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
621 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
623 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
624 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
626 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
627 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
628 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
629 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
631 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
633 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
637 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
638 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
640 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
641 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
643 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
644 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
646 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
647 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
649 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
650 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
652 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
654 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
655 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
656 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
659 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
661 ** Build-related bug fixes
663 installing .mo files would fail
666 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
670 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
672 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
675 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
679 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
680 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
684 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
686 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
687 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
689 ** Deprecated options
691 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
692 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
694 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
698 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
700 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
701 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
702 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
703 conforming to older POSIX versions.
705 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
708 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
714 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
719 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
721 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
723 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
724 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
725 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
727 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
728 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
729 problematic usages. These include:
731 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
732 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
733 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
734 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
735 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
736 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
737 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
738 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
739 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
741 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
742 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
744 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
745 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
746 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
747 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
749 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
750 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
751 between binary and text files.
753 The following programs now always use text input/output:
757 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
761 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
762 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
765 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
767 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
768 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
770 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
771 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
772 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
774 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
776 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
778 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
779 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
780 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
784 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
786 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
787 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
789 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
790 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
791 blocks until F contains N blocks.
795 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
796 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
800 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
801 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
802 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
806 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
807 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
811 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
813 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
815 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
819 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
820 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
821 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
823 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
824 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
825 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
826 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
827 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
829 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
833 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
834 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
835 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
837 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
839 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
840 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
841 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
842 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
844 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
846 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
847 rather than silently wrapping around.
849 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
850 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
852 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
853 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
855 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
856 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
857 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
860 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
862 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
864 ** Improved robustness
866 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
867 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
868 no matter how large the result.
870 ** Improved portability
872 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
873 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
875 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
877 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
878 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
879 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
881 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
882 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
886 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
887 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
889 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
891 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
892 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
893 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
894 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
896 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
897 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
899 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
900 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
901 categories if not specified by dircolors.
903 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
905 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
906 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
908 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
909 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
911 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
913 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
914 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
916 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
917 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
919 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
920 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
921 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
923 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
925 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
927 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
931 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
933 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
934 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
935 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
937 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
938 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
940 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
941 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
942 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
944 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
945 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
947 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
948 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
949 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
950 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
952 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
953 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
955 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
956 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
957 the file system does not support it.
959 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
961 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
962 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
964 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
966 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
967 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
969 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
970 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
971 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
972 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
974 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
975 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
978 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
979 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
980 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
981 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
983 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
984 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
985 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
986 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
988 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
989 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
991 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
993 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
994 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
995 reporting incorrect results.
999 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1000 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1002 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1005 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1007 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1008 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1010 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1011 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1013 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1016 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1017 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1018 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1019 the file name does not look like a page range.
1021 printf has several changes:
1023 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1024 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1026 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1027 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1028 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1030 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1031 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1034 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1035 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1037 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1038 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1040 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1042 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1043 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1045 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1047 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1049 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1050 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1051 when first encountering the directory.
1055 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1056 output; POSIX requires this.
1058 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1059 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1061 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1063 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1064 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1066 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1067 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1069 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1070 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1071 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1072 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1073 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1074 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1075 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1077 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1078 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1079 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1081 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1082 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1084 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1086 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1088 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1089 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1090 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1091 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1093 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1097 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1098 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1099 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1100 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1101 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1103 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1104 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1105 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1107 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1108 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1110 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1111 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1113 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1114 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1115 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1116 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1117 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1119 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1120 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1122 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1123 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1125 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1127 nocreat do not create the output file
1128 excl fail if the output file already exists
1129 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1130 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1132 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1134 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1135 direct use direct I/O for data
1136 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1137 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1138 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1139 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1140 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1142 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1144 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1145 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1148 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1149 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1150 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1151 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1152 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1153 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1155 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1156 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1158 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1161 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1163 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1165 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1166 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1168 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1169 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1170 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1172 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1173 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1174 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1176 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1178 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1179 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1181 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1182 for compatibility with bash.
1184 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1186 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1187 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1188 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1189 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1191 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1192 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1194 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1195 ls supports TABSIZE.
1196 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1197 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1198 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1200 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1203 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1205 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1206 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1207 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1208 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1209 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1210 an offset, not as a file name.
1212 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1213 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1215 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1216 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1218 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1219 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1221 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1222 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1223 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1225 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1226 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1228 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1229 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1233 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1235 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1237 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1241 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1242 or more arguments between partitions.
1244 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1245 holes in the destination.
1247 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1248 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1249 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1250 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1251 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1252 terminates immediately.
1254 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1256 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1258 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1259 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1260 not the empty string.
1262 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1263 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1267 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1268 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1269 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1272 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1279 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1283 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1284 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1286 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1287 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1289 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1290 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1291 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1294 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1298 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1299 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1301 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1302 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1304 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1305 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1306 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1308 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1310 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1313 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1315 ** Configuration option
1317 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1318 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1322 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1323 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1327 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1328 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1329 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1332 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1333 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1334 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1335 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1336 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1337 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1338 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1341 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1345 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1346 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1347 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1349 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1350 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1352 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1354 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1355 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1356 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1357 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1359 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1361 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1362 not just the ones that reference directories
1364 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1365 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1367 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1368 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1369 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1371 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1372 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1373 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1374 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1375 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1376 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1378 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1383 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1384 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1386 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1388 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1390 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1392 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1393 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1395 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1396 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1398 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1400 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1404 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1406 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1408 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1409 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1410 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1411 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1412 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1414 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1415 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1417 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1418 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1420 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1421 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1423 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1424 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1425 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1429 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1430 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1431 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1432 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1433 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1434 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1435 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1436 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1437 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1438 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1439 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1440 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1441 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1442 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1444 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1446 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1447 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1449 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1451 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1453 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1454 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1456 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1458 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1459 without a trailing newline.
1461 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1462 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1464 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1467 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1471 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1473 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1475 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1476 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1477 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1478 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1480 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1482 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1483 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1484 be printed without leading spaces.
1486 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1487 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1492 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1493 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1494 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1496 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1498 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1499 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1501 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1502 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1504 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1505 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1507 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1509 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1511 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1513 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1514 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1516 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1518 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1520 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1521 byte offsets are specified.
1524 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1527 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1530 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1531 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1532 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1533 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1534 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1535 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1536 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1537 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1538 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1539 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1540 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1541 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1542 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1543 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1544 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1545 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1546 directory where M has write access.
1547 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1548 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1549 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1552 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1553 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1554 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1555 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1556 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1557 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1558 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1559 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1560 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1561 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1562 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1563 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1564 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1565 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1566 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1567 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1568 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1569 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1570 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1571 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1572 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1573 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1574 appeared one additional time.
1576 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1577 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1578 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1579 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1582 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1583 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1584 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1585 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1586 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1587 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1588 if there were more than 338.
1590 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1591 - false --help now exits nonzero
1594 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1595 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1596 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1597 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1600 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1601 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1602 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1603 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1604 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1607 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1608 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1609 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1610 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1611 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1612 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1613 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1616 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1617 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1618 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1619 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1620 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1621 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1623 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1624 under certain unusual conditions
1625 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1626 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1629 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1630 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1631 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1632 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1633 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1634 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1635 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1636 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1637 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1638 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1639 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1640 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1641 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1642 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1643 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1644 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1647 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1648 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1651 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1652 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1653 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1654 involving hard-linked directories
1655 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1656 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1657 character-special and block files
1660 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1661 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1662 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1663 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1664 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1665 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1666 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1667 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1668 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1670 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1671 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1672 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1673 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1674 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1675 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1676 specified on the command line.
1677 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1678 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1679 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1680 the first file untouched.
1681 * readlink: new program
1682 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1683 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1684 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1685 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1686 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1687 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1690 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1691 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1692 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1693 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1694 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1695 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1696 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1697 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1698 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1699 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1700 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1701 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1703 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1704 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1705 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1707 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1708 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1709 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1710 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1711 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1712 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1713 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1714 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1717 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1718 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1721 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1722 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1723 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1724 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1725 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1726 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1727 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1730 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1731 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1733 ========================================================================
1734 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1735 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1738 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1740 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1741 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1742 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1743 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1744 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1745 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1746 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1747 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1748 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1749 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1750 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1751 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1753 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1754 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1755 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1756 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1758 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1761 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1763 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1764 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1765 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1766 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1767 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1768 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1769 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1772 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1773 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1774 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1775 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1776 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1777 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1778 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1779 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1780 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1781 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1782 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1783 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1784 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1785 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1786 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1787 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1789 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1790 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1792 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1793 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1794 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1795 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1796 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1797 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1799 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1800 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1801 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1802 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1803 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1804 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1805 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1807 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1808 the source files in the following example:
1809 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1810 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1811 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1812 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1813 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1814 links between source files with --preserve=links
1815 * cp accepts new options:
1816 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1817 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1818 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1819 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1820 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1821 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1822 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1823 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1824 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1826 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1827 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1828 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1829 even though it's older than dest.
1830 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1831 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1832 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1833 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1834 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1836 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1837 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1838 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1839 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1840 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1841 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1842 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1844 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1845 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1846 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1848 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1849 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1850 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1851 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1852 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1853 This is the default.
1855 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1856 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1857 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1858 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1859 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1861 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1864 ========================================================================
1865 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1866 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1869 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1870 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1872 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1873 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1874 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1875 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1876 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1878 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1879 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1880 that specifies a non-directory
1883 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1884 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1885 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1886 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1887 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1888 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1889 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1890 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1891 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1892 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1893 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1894 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1895 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1896 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1897 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1898 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1899 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1900 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1901 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1902 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1903 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1904 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1905 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1906 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1908 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1909 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1910 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1912 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1914 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1915 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1917 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1918 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1919 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1920 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1921 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1923 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1924 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1925 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1926 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1927 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1929 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1931 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1932 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1933 * still more portability fixes
1934 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1935 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1937 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1939 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1941 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1943 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1944 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1945 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1946 there is any time remaining
1947 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1949 ========================================================================
1950 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1951 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1953 This package began as the union of the following:
1954 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1956 ========================================================================
1958 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1961 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1962 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1963 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1964 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1965 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1966 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.