1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (????-??-??) [beta]
7 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
8 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
9 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
12 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
16 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
17 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
19 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
21 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
23 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
25 ** Programs no longer installed by default
29 ** Changes in behavior
31 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
32 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
34 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
35 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
37 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
38 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
39 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
43 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
44 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
45 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
46 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
47 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
48 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
49 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
50 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
51 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
52 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
53 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
55 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
58 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
59 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
60 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
62 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
63 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
64 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
69 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
70 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
71 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
72 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
74 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
75 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
76 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
77 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
78 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
79 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
82 ** Remove deprecated options
84 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
85 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
86 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
87 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
88 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
90 ** Improved robustness
92 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
93 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
94 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
95 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
96 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
97 loss of the contents of a/f.
99 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
100 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
104 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
105 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
106 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
108 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
109 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
110 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
111 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
113 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
114 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
115 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
116 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
117 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
118 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
119 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
120 destination is a symlink.
122 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
124 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
125 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
127 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
128 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
130 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
132 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
133 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
135 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
136 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
138 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
141 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
142 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
144 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
145 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
147 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
148 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
149 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
150 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
152 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
153 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
154 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
156 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
157 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
158 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
160 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
161 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
162 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
163 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
165 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
166 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
167 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
169 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
170 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
172 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
173 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
175 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
177 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
178 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
179 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
181 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
182 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
184 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
185 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
187 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
188 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
190 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
191 [present in the original version]
194 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
198 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
200 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
201 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
202 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
204 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
205 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
207 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
211 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
212 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
214 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
215 support but with insufficient /proc support.
217 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
218 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
220 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
221 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
222 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
223 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
224 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
225 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
227 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
228 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
231 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
232 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
234 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
237 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
238 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
239 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
241 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
242 directory is unreadable.
244 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
245 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
246 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
248 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
249 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
250 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
251 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
252 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
255 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
256 Before it would print nothing.
258 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
260 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
261 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
262 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
263 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
264 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
265 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
266 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
267 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
269 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
273 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
274 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
275 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
277 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
278 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
279 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
280 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
283 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
287 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
288 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
289 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
290 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
291 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
292 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
293 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
295 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
296 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
297 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
298 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
299 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
300 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
301 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
302 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
304 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
305 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
306 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
309 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
313 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
314 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
316 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
317 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
318 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
320 ** Improved robustness
322 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
323 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
324 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
327 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
331 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
332 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
333 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
334 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
335 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
337 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
341 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
344 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
348 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
349 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
350 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
351 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
353 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
354 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
356 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
357 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
358 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
361 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
363 ** Improved robustness
365 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
366 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
368 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
369 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
370 or NFS-mounted partition.
372 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
373 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
377 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
378 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
379 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
380 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
381 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
382 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
384 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
385 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
387 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
388 or neglect to report file removal.
390 For the "groups" command:
392 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
393 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
395 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
397 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
399 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
403 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
404 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
407 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
409 ** Changes in behavior
411 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
412 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
413 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
414 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
416 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
417 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
418 a final `./' or `../' component.
420 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
421 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
424 ** Infrastructure changes
426 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
427 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
428 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
429 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
433 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
436 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
437 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
438 dirent.d_type support.
440 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
441 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
443 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
444 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
445 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
446 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
449 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
451 ** Changes in behavior
453 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
457 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
458 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
462 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
463 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
464 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
466 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
467 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
469 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
470 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
472 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
474 ** Improved robustness
476 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
477 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
478 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
480 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
481 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
484 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
485 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
487 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
488 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
490 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
491 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
493 ** Changes in behavior
495 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
496 where the two are distinct.
498 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
499 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
500 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
501 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
502 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
503 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
504 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
505 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
506 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
507 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
508 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
509 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
510 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
511 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
512 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
513 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
514 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
516 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
517 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
518 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
520 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
521 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
522 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
523 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
526 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
527 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
531 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
532 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
533 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
534 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
536 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
537 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
538 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
540 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
541 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
542 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
543 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
544 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
547 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
548 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
550 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
551 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
552 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
553 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
555 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
556 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
557 successful and the output is easier to parse.
559 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
560 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
561 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
562 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
564 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
565 and sticky) with the -m option.
567 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
568 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
569 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
570 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
571 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
573 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
574 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
576 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
580 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
581 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
582 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
583 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
585 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
587 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
589 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
590 silently ignoring one of them.
592 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
593 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
594 containing this change was 5.92.
596 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
597 automatically newline terminated.
599 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
600 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
601 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
602 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
605 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
606 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
607 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
610 ** Scheduled for removal
612 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
613 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
615 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
616 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
617 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
618 command to unlink a directory.
620 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
621 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
622 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
623 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
627 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
628 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
629 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
630 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
631 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
632 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
636 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
637 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
639 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
641 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
642 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
643 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
645 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
646 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
649 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
650 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
652 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
653 list directories before files.
655 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
656 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
657 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
658 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
661 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
663 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
665 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
666 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
667 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
669 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
670 list of NUL-terminated file names.
674 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
675 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
676 usually printing nothing.
678 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
680 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
681 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
682 them with hard-linked directories.
684 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
685 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
686 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
688 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
689 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
690 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
692 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
695 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
696 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
698 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
699 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
701 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
702 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
704 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
705 all command-line arguments.
707 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
709 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
711 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
712 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
714 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
716 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
717 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
718 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
719 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
720 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
722 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
723 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
725 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
726 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
727 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
728 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
730 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
732 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
736 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
737 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
739 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
740 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
742 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
743 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
745 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
746 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
748 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
749 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
751 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
753 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
754 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
755 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
758 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
760 ** Build-related bug fixes
762 installing .mo files would fail
765 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
769 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
771 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
774 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
778 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
779 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
783 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
785 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
786 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
788 ** Deprecated options
790 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
791 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
793 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
797 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
799 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
800 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
801 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
802 conforming to older POSIX versions.
804 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
807 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
813 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
818 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
820 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
822 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
823 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
824 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
826 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
827 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
828 problematic usages. These include:
830 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
831 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
832 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
833 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
834 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
835 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
836 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
837 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
838 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
840 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
841 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
843 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
844 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
845 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
846 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
848 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
849 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
850 between binary and text files.
852 The following programs now always use text input/output:
856 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
860 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
861 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
864 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
866 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
867 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
869 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
870 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
871 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
873 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
875 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
877 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
878 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
879 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
883 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
885 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
886 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
888 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
889 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
890 blocks until F contains N blocks.
894 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
895 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
899 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
900 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
901 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
905 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
906 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
910 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
912 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
914 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
918 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
919 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
920 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
922 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
923 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
924 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
925 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
926 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
928 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
932 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
933 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
934 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
936 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
938 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
939 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
940 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
941 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
943 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
945 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
946 rather than silently wrapping around.
948 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
949 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
951 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
952 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
954 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
955 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
956 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
959 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
961 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
963 ** Improved robustness
965 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
966 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
967 no matter how large the result.
969 ** Improved portability
971 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
972 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
974 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
976 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
977 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
978 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
980 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
981 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
985 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
986 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
988 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
990 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
991 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
992 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
993 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
995 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
996 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
998 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
999 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1000 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1002 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1004 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1005 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1007 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1008 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1010 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1012 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1013 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1015 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1016 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1018 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1019 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1020 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1022 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1024 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1026 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1030 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1032 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1033 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1034 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1036 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1037 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1039 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1040 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1041 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1043 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1044 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1046 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1047 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1048 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1049 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1051 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1052 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1054 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1055 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1056 the file system does not support it.
1058 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1060 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1061 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1063 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1065 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1066 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1068 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1069 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1070 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1071 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1073 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1074 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1077 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1078 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1079 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1080 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1082 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1083 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1084 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1085 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1087 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1088 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1090 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1092 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1093 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1094 reporting incorrect results.
1098 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1099 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1101 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1104 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1106 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1107 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1109 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1110 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1112 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1115 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1116 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1117 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1118 the file name does not look like a page range.
1120 printf has several changes:
1122 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1123 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1125 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1126 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1127 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1129 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1130 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1133 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1134 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1136 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1137 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1139 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1141 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1142 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1144 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1146 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1148 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1149 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1150 when first encountering the directory.
1154 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1155 output; POSIX requires this.
1157 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1158 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1160 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1162 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1163 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1165 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1166 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1168 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1169 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1170 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1171 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1172 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1173 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1174 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1176 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1177 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1178 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1180 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1181 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1183 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1185 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1187 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1188 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1189 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1190 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1192 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1196 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1197 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1198 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1199 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1200 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1202 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1203 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1204 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1206 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1207 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1209 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1210 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1212 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1213 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1214 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1215 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1216 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1218 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1219 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1221 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1222 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1224 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1226 nocreat do not create the output file
1227 excl fail if the output file already exists
1228 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1229 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1231 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1233 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1234 direct use direct I/O for data
1235 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1236 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1237 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1238 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1239 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1241 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1243 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1244 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1247 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1248 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1249 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1250 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1251 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1252 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1254 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1255 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1257 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1260 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1262 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1264 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1265 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1267 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1268 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1269 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1271 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1272 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1273 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1275 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1277 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1278 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1280 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1281 for compatibility with bash.
1283 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1285 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1286 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1287 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1288 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1290 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1291 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1293 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1294 ls supports TABSIZE.
1295 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1296 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1297 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1299 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1302 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1304 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1305 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1306 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1307 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1308 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1309 an offset, not as a file name.
1311 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1312 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1314 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1315 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1317 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1318 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1320 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1321 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1322 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1324 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1325 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1327 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1328 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1332 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1334 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1336 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1340 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1341 or more arguments between partitions.
1343 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1344 holes in the destination.
1346 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1347 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1348 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1349 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1350 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1351 terminates immediately.
1353 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1355 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1357 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1358 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1359 not the empty string.
1361 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1362 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1366 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1367 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1368 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1371 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1378 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1382 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1383 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1385 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1386 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1388 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1389 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1390 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1393 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1397 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1398 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1400 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1401 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1403 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1404 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1405 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1407 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1409 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1412 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1414 ** Configuration option
1416 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1417 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1421 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1422 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1426 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1427 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1428 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1431 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1432 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1433 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1434 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1435 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1436 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1437 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1440 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1444 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1445 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1446 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1448 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1449 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1451 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1453 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1454 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1455 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1456 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1458 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1460 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1461 not just the ones that reference directories
1463 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1464 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1466 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1467 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1468 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1470 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1471 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1472 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1473 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1474 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1475 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1477 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1482 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1483 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1485 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1487 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1489 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1491 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1492 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1494 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1495 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1497 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1499 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1503 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1505 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1507 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1508 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1509 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1510 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1511 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1513 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1514 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1516 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1517 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1519 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1520 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1522 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1523 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1524 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1528 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1529 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1530 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1531 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1532 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1533 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1534 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1535 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1536 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1537 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1538 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1539 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1540 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1541 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1543 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1545 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1546 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1548 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1550 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1552 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1553 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1555 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1557 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1558 without a trailing newline.
1560 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1561 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1563 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1566 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1570 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1572 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1574 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1575 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1576 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1577 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1579 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1581 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1582 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1583 be printed without leading spaces.
1585 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1586 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1591 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1592 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1593 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1595 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1597 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1598 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1600 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1601 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1603 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1604 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1606 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1608 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1610 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1612 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1613 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1615 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1617 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1619 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1620 byte offsets are specified.
1623 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1626 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1629 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1630 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1631 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1632 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1633 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1634 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1635 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1636 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1637 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1638 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1639 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1640 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1641 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1642 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1643 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1644 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1645 directory where M has write access.
1646 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1647 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1648 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1651 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1652 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1653 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1654 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1655 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1656 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1657 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1658 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1659 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1660 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1661 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1662 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1663 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1664 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1665 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1666 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1667 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1668 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1669 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1670 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1671 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1672 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1673 appeared one additional time.
1675 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1676 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1677 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1678 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1681 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1682 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1683 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1684 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1685 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1686 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1687 if there were more than 338.
1689 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1690 - false --help now exits nonzero
1693 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1694 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1695 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1696 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1699 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1700 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1701 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1702 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1703 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1706 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1707 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1708 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1709 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1710 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1711 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1712 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1715 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1716 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1717 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1718 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1719 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1720 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1722 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1723 under certain unusual conditions
1724 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1725 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1728 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1729 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1730 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1731 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1732 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1733 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1734 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1735 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1736 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1737 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1738 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1739 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1740 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1741 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1742 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1743 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1746 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1747 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1750 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1751 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1752 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1753 involving hard-linked directories
1754 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1755 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1756 character-special and block files
1759 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1760 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1761 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1762 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1763 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1764 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1765 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1766 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1767 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1769 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1770 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1771 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1772 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1773 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1774 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1775 specified on the command line.
1776 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1777 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1778 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1779 the first file untouched.
1780 * readlink: new program
1781 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1782 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1783 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1784 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1785 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1786 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1789 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1790 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1791 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1792 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1793 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1794 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1795 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1796 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1797 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1798 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1799 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1800 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1802 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1803 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1804 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1806 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1807 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1808 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1809 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1810 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1811 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1812 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1813 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1816 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1817 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1820 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1821 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1822 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1823 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1824 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1825 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1826 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1829 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1830 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1832 ========================================================================
1833 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1834 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1837 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1839 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1840 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1841 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1842 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1843 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1844 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1845 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1846 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1847 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1848 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1849 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1850 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1852 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1853 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1854 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1855 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1857 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1860 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1862 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1863 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1864 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1865 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1866 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1867 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1868 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1871 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1872 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1873 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1874 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1875 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1876 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1877 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1878 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1879 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1880 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1881 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1882 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1883 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1884 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1885 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1886 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1888 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1889 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1891 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1892 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1893 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1894 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1895 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1896 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1898 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1899 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1900 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1901 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1902 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1903 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1904 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1906 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1907 the source files in the following example:
1908 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1909 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1910 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1911 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1912 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1913 links between source files with --preserve=links
1914 * cp accepts new options:
1915 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1916 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1917 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1918 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1919 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1920 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1921 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1922 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1923 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1925 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1926 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1927 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1928 even though it's older than dest.
1929 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1930 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1931 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1932 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1933 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1935 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1936 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1937 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1938 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1939 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1940 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1941 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1943 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1944 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1945 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1947 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1948 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1949 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1950 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1951 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1952 This is the default.
1954 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1955 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1956 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1957 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1958 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1960 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1963 ========================================================================
1964 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1965 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1968 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1969 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1971 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1972 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1973 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1974 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1975 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1977 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1978 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1979 that specifies a non-directory
1982 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1983 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1984 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1985 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1986 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1987 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1988 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1989 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1990 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1991 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1992 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1993 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1994 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1995 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1996 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1997 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1998 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1999 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2000 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2001 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2002 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2003 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2004 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2005 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2007 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2008 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2009 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2011 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2013 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2014 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2016 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2017 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2018 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2019 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2020 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2022 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2023 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2024 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2025 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2026 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2028 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2030 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2031 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2032 * still more portability fixes
2033 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2034 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2036 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2038 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2040 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2042 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2043 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2044 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2045 there is any time remaining
2046 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2048 ========================================================================
2049 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2050 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2052 This package began as the union of the following:
2053 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2055 ========================================================================
2057 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2060 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2061 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2062 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2063 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2064 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2065 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.