1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
8 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
9 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
11 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
12 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
14 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
15 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
16 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
18 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
19 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
21 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
22 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
23 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
24 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
28 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
29 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
31 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
34 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
35 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
37 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
39 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
40 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
41 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
43 ** Changes in behavior
45 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
46 rather than its aliased target.
48 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
49 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
50 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
52 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
53 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
54 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
55 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
56 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
57 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
58 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
59 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
61 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
63 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
65 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
66 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
69 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
70 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
71 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
72 control like taskset for example.
74 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
76 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
77 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
78 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning.
80 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
81 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
82 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
83 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
85 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
86 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
87 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
89 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
90 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
91 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
94 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
98 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
99 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
101 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
103 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
104 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
106 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
107 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
108 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
109 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
111 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
112 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
113 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
117 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
118 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
120 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
121 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
122 duration after the initial signal was sent.
124 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
125 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
126 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
127 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
128 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
129 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
130 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
131 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
132 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
134 ** Changes in behavior
136 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
137 sequence when it would be a no-op.
139 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
140 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
143 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
147 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
148 of available processors, which may not have been the case
149 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
150 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
154 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
155 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
157 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
158 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
159 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
160 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
162 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
163 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
164 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
167 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
171 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
172 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
173 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
175 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
176 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
177 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
179 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
180 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
182 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
183 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
184 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
185 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
187 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
188 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
189 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
191 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
192 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
193 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
194 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
196 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
197 renamed-aside and then recreated.
198 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
200 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
201 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
202 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
203 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
205 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
206 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
207 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
209 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
210 processes will not intersperse their output.
211 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
214 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
218 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
219 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
221 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
222 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
224 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
225 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
226 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
227 the presence of the empty string argument.
228 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
230 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
231 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
232 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
233 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
235 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
236 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
238 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
239 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
240 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
242 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
243 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
244 and with a malicious user on the same system
245 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
246 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
249 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
253 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
254 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
255 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
257 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
258 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
259 offending directory and all "contents."
261 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
262 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
263 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
265 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
266 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
267 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
269 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
270 processes will not intersperse their output.
271 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
272 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
274 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
275 output the name of the file to stdout.
276 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
278 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
279 call fails with errno == EACCES.
280 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
282 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
283 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
286 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
287 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
288 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
290 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
291 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
292 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
293 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
294 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
295 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
297 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
298 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
299 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
300 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
302 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
303 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
305 ** Changes in behavior
307 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
308 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
309 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
310 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
311 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
313 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
314 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
315 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
316 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
318 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
320 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
321 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
322 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
323 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
324 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
328 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
332 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
333 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
335 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
336 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
338 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
339 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
340 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
342 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
343 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
346 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
350 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
351 when the source file doesn't have write access.
352 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
354 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
355 to accommodate leap seconds.
356 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
358 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
359 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
360 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
362 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
364 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
365 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
366 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
368 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
369 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
370 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
371 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
372 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
376 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
377 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
378 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
379 directory or a symlink to a directory.
381 ** Changes in behavior
383 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
384 environment variable is set.
386 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
387 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
388 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
392 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
393 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
394 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
395 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
397 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
398 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
399 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
400 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
404 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
405 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
406 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
408 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
409 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
410 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
411 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
412 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
413 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
416 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
417 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
420 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
424 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
425 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
426 and libraries tested at configure time.
427 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
429 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
430 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
432 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
433 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
435 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
436 printing a summary to stderr.
437 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
439 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
440 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
441 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
443 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
444 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
446 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
447 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
448 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
449 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
451 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
452 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
453 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
454 which is relatively unusual.
455 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
457 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
458 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
459 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
460 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
461 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
462 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
463 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
467 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
468 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
469 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
470 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
471 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
475 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
476 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
478 ** Changes in behavior
480 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
481 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
482 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
483 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
484 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
487 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
491 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
492 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
494 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
495 before data copying has started.
497 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
498 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
500 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
501 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
502 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
503 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
505 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
506 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
507 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
508 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
510 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
515 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
516 for its standard streams.
518 ** Changes in behavior
520 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
521 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
522 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
523 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
524 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
525 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
527 ** Deprecated options
529 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
530 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
534 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
536 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
537 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
540 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
542 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
543 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
545 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
546 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
549 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
553 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
554 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
555 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
556 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
558 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
559 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
560 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
561 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
562 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
567 make check: two tests have been corrected
571 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
572 inherited from gnulib.
575 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
579 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
580 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
581 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
582 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
584 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
585 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
587 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
589 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
590 systems without xattr support.
592 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
593 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
594 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
596 ** Changes in behavior
598 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
599 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
600 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
601 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
603 ** Improved robustness
605 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
606 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
607 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
608 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
609 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
610 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
611 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
612 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
613 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
617 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
618 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
620 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
621 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
622 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
623 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
624 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
627 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
631 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
632 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
633 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
637 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
638 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
639 data was read, or on process exit.
640 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
642 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
643 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
644 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
645 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
647 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
648 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
649 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
650 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
652 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
653 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
655 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
656 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
658 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
659 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
660 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
662 ** Changes in behavior
664 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
665 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
666 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
668 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
669 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
671 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
672 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
673 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
676 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
680 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
682 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
683 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
684 install: Never copies xattrs
686 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
687 from overwriting any existing destination file
689 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
690 mode where this feature is available.
692 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
693 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
694 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
695 do not modify the destination at all.
697 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
699 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
703 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
704 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
706 cp uses much less memory in some situations
708 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
709 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
711 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
712 processing the first file name
714 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
715 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
716 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
717 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
719 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
720 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
722 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
723 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
726 ** Changes in behavior
728 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
729 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
731 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
732 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
733 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
735 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
736 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
738 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
740 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
741 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
742 is still marked with a '+'.
745 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
749 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
750 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
754 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
755 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
756 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
757 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
758 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
759 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
761 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
762 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
764 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
765 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
767 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
769 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
770 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
771 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
773 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
774 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
776 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
777 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
778 used to factor large numbers.
780 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
783 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
785 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
787 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
788 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
790 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
791 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
792 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
793 maximum command-line (argv) length.
795 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
796 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
797 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
799 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
800 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
804 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
806 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
807 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
809 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
810 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
812 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
814 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
815 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
819 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
820 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
821 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
823 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
825 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
826 no matter how many files are in a given directory
828 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
829 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
830 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
832 ** Changes in behavior
834 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
835 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
838 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
842 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
844 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
845 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
846 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
848 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
849 with no USERNAME argument.
851 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
852 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
853 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
855 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
856 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
857 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
858 number of fields for some inputs.
860 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
861 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
863 ** Changes in behavior
865 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
866 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
869 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
873 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
875 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
876 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
877 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
878 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
880 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
881 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
883 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
884 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
886 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
887 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
889 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
890 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
891 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
892 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
894 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
895 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
896 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
897 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
898 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
899 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
901 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
902 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
904 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
905 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
906 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
908 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
909 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
911 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
912 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
914 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
915 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
916 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
917 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
919 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
920 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
922 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
923 in more cases when a directory is empty.
925 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
926 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
927 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
931 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
932 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
934 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
935 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
936 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
937 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
941 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
942 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
944 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
946 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
950 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
951 which have negative errno values.
955 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
959 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
963 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
964 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
967 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
971 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
972 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
973 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
975 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
976 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
977 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
978 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
982 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
983 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
984 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
985 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
988 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
992 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
994 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
995 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
996 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
999 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1003 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1004 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1006 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1008 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1010 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1012 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1016 ** Changes in behavior
1018 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1019 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1021 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1022 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1024 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1025 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1026 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1030 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1031 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1032 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1033 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1034 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1035 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1036 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1037 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1038 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1039 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1040 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1042 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1043 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1044 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1047 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1050 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1051 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1052 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1054 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1055 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1056 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1059 ** New build options
1061 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1062 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1063 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1064 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1066 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1067 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1068 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1069 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1070 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1071 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1072 of "make check" fail.
1074 ** Remove deprecated options
1076 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1077 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1078 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1079 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1080 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1082 ** Improved robustness
1084 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1085 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1086 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1087 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1088 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1089 loss of the contents of a/f.
1091 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1092 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1096 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1097 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1098 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1100 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1101 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1102 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1103 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1105 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1106 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1107 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1108 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1109 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1110 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1111 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1112 destination is a symlink.
1114 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1116 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1117 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1119 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1120 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1122 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1124 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1125 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1127 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1128 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1130 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1133 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1134 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1136 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1137 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1139 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1140 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1141 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1142 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1144 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1145 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1146 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1148 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1149 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1150 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1152 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1153 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1154 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1155 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1157 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1158 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1159 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1161 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1162 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1164 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1165 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1167 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1169 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1170 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1171 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1173 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1174 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1176 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1177 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1179 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1180 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1182 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1183 [present in the original version]
1186 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1190 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1192 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1193 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1194 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1196 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1197 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1199 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1203 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1204 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1206 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1207 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1209 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1210 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1212 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1213 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1214 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1215 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1216 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1217 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1219 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1220 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1223 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1224 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1226 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1229 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1230 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1231 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1233 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1234 directory is unreadable.
1236 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1237 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1238 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1240 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1241 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1242 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1243 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1244 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1247 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1248 Before it would print nothing.
1250 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1252 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1253 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1254 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1255 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1256 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1257 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1258 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1259 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1261 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1265 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1266 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1267 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1269 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1270 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1271 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1272 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1275 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1279 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1280 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1281 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1282 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1283 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1284 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1285 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1287 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1288 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1289 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1290 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1291 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1292 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1293 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1294 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1296 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1297 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1298 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1301 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1305 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1306 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1308 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1309 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1310 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1312 ** Improved robustness
1314 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1315 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1316 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1319 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1323 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1324 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1325 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1326 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1327 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1329 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1333 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1336 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1340 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1341 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1342 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1343 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1345 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1346 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1348 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1349 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1350 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1353 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1355 ** Improved robustness
1357 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1358 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1360 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1361 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1362 or NFS-mounted partition.
1364 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1365 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1369 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1370 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1371 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1372 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1373 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1374 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1376 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1377 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1379 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1380 or neglect to report file removal.
1382 For the "groups" command:
1384 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1385 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1387 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1389 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1391 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1395 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1396 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1399 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1401 ** Changes in behavior
1403 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1404 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1405 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1406 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1408 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1409 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1410 a final `./' or `../' component.
1412 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1413 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1414 this only for pipes.
1416 ** Infrastructure changes
1418 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1419 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1420 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1421 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1425 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1426 name is "." or "..".
1428 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1429 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1430 dirent.d_type support.
1432 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1433 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1435 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1436 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1437 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1438 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1441 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1443 ** Changes in behavior
1445 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1449 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1450 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1454 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1455 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1456 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1458 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1459 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1461 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1462 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1464 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1466 ** Improved robustness
1468 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1469 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1470 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1472 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1473 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1476 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1477 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1479 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1480 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1482 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1483 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1485 ** Changes in behavior
1487 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1488 where the two are distinct.
1490 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1491 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1492 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1493 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1494 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1495 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1496 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1497 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1498 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1499 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1500 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1501 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1502 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1503 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1504 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1505 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1506 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1508 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1509 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1510 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1512 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1513 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1514 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1515 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1518 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1519 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1523 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1524 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1525 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1526 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1528 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1529 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1530 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1532 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1533 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1534 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1535 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1536 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1539 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1540 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1542 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1543 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1544 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1545 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1547 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1548 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1549 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1551 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1552 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1553 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1554 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1556 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1557 and sticky) with the -m option.
1559 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1560 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1561 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1562 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1563 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1565 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1566 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1568 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1572 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1573 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1574 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1575 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1577 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1579 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1581 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1582 silently ignoring one of them.
1584 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1585 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1586 containing this change was 5.92.
1588 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1589 automatically newline terminated.
1591 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1592 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1593 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1594 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1597 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1598 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1599 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1602 ** Scheduled for removal
1604 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1605 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1607 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1608 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1609 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1610 command to unlink a directory.
1612 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1613 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1614 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1615 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1619 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1620 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1621 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1622 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1623 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1624 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1628 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1629 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1631 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1633 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1634 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1635 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1637 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1638 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1641 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1642 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1644 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1645 list directories before files.
1647 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1648 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1649 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1650 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1653 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1655 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1657 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1658 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1659 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1661 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1662 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1666 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1667 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1668 usually printing nothing.
1670 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1672 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1673 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1674 them with hard-linked directories.
1676 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1677 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1678 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1680 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1681 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1682 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1684 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1687 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1688 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1690 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1691 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1693 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1694 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1696 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1697 all command-line arguments.
1699 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1701 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1703 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1704 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1706 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1708 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1709 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1710 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1711 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1712 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1714 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1715 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1717 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1718 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1719 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1720 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1722 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1724 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1728 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1729 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1731 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1732 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1734 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1735 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1737 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1738 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1740 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1741 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1743 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1745 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1746 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1747 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1750 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1752 ** Build-related bug fixes
1754 installing .mo files would fail
1757 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1761 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1763 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1766 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1770 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1771 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1775 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1777 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1778 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1780 ** Deprecated options
1782 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1783 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1785 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1789 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1791 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1792 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1793 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1794 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1796 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1799 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1805 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1810 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1812 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1814 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1815 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1816 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1818 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1819 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1820 problematic usages. These include:
1822 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1823 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1824 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1825 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1826 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1827 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1828 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1829 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1830 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1832 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1833 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1835 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1836 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1837 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1838 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1840 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1841 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1842 between binary and text files.
1844 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1848 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1852 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1853 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1855 head tac tail tee tr
1856 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1858 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1859 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1861 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1862 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1863 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1865 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1867 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1869 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1870 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1871 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1875 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1877 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1878 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1880 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1881 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1882 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1886 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1887 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1891 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1892 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1893 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1897 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1898 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1902 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1904 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1906 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1910 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1911 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1912 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1914 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1915 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1916 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1917 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1918 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1920 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1924 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1925 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1926 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1928 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1930 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1931 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1932 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1933 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1935 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1937 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1938 rather than silently wrapping around.
1940 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1941 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1943 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1944 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1946 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1947 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1948 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1949 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1951 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1953 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1955 ** Improved robustness
1957 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1958 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1959 no matter how large the result.
1961 ** Improved portability
1963 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1964 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1966 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1968 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1969 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1970 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1972 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1973 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1977 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1978 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1980 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1982 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1983 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1984 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1985 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1987 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1988 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1990 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1991 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1992 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1994 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1996 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1997 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1999 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2000 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2002 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2004 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2005 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2007 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2008 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2010 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2011 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2012 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2014 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2016 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2018 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2022 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2024 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2025 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2026 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2028 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2029 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2031 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2032 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2033 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2035 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2036 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2038 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2039 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2040 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2041 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2043 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2044 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2046 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2047 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2048 the file system does not support it.
2050 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2052 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2053 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2055 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2057 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2058 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2060 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2061 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2062 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2063 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2065 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2066 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2069 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2070 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2071 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2072 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2074 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2075 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2076 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2077 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2079 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2080 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2082 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2084 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2085 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2086 reporting incorrect results.
2090 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2091 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2093 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2096 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2098 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2099 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2101 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2102 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2104 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2107 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2108 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2109 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2110 the file name does not look like a page range.
2112 printf has several changes:
2114 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2115 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2117 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2118 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2119 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2121 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2122 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2125 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2126 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2128 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2129 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2131 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2133 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2134 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2136 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2138 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2140 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2141 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2142 when first encountering the directory.
2146 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2147 output; POSIX requires this.
2149 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2150 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2152 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2154 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2155 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2157 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2158 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2160 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2161 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2162 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2163 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2164 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2165 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2166 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2168 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2169 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2170 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2172 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2173 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2175 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2177 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2179 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2180 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2181 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2182 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2184 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2188 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2189 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2190 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2191 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2192 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2194 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2195 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2196 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2198 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2199 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2201 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2202 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2204 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2205 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2206 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2207 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2208 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2210 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2211 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2213 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2214 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2216 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2218 nocreat do not create the output file
2219 excl fail if the output file already exists
2220 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2221 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2223 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2225 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2226 direct use direct I/O for data
2227 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2228 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2229 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2230 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2231 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2233 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2235 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2236 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2239 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2240 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2241 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2242 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2243 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2244 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2246 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2247 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2249 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2252 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2254 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2256 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2257 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2259 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2260 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2261 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2263 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2264 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2265 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2267 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2269 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2270 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2272 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2273 for compatibility with bash.
2275 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2277 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2278 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2279 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2280 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2282 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2283 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2285 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2286 ls supports TABSIZE.
2287 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2288 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2289 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2291 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2294 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2296 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2297 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2298 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2299 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2300 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2301 an offset, not as a file name.
2303 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2304 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2306 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2307 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2309 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2310 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2312 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2313 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2314 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2316 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2317 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2319 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2320 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2324 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2326 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2328 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2332 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2333 or more arguments between partitions.
2335 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2336 holes in the destination.
2338 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2339 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2340 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2341 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2342 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2343 terminates immediately.
2345 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2347 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2349 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2350 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2351 not the empty string.
2353 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2354 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2358 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2359 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2360 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2363 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2370 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2374 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2375 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2377 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2378 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2380 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2381 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2382 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2385 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2389 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2390 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2392 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2393 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2395 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2396 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2397 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2399 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2401 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2404 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2406 ** Configuration option
2408 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2409 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2413 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2414 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2418 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2419 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2420 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2423 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2424 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2425 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2426 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2427 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2428 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2429 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2432 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2436 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2437 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2438 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2440 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2441 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2443 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2445 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2446 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2447 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2448 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2450 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2452 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2453 not just the ones that reference directories
2455 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2456 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2458 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2459 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2460 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2462 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2463 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2464 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2465 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2466 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2467 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2469 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2474 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2475 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2477 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2479 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2481 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2483 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2484 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2486 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2487 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2489 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2491 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2495 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2497 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2499 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2500 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2501 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2502 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2503 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2505 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2506 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2508 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2509 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2511 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2512 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2514 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2515 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2516 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2520 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2521 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2522 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2523 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2524 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2525 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2526 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2527 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2528 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2529 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2530 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2531 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2532 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2533 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2535 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2537 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2538 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2540 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2542 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2544 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2545 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2547 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2549 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2550 without a trailing newline.
2552 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2553 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2555 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2558 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2562 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2564 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2566 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2567 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2568 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2569 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2571 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2573 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2574 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2575 be printed without leading spaces.
2577 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2578 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2583 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2584 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2585 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2587 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2589 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2590 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2592 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2593 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2595 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2596 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2598 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2600 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2602 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2604 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2605 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2607 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2609 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2611 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2612 byte offsets are specified.
2615 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2618 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2621 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2622 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2623 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2624 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2625 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2626 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2627 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2628 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2629 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2630 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2631 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2632 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2633 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2634 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2635 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2636 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2637 directory where M has write access.
2638 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2639 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2640 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2643 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2644 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2645 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2646 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2647 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2648 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2649 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2650 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2651 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2652 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2653 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2654 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2655 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2656 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2657 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2658 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2659 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2660 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2661 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2662 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2663 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2664 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2665 appeared one additional time.
2667 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2668 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2669 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2670 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2673 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2674 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2675 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2676 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2677 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2678 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2679 if there were more than 338.
2681 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2682 - false --help now exits nonzero
2685 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2686 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2687 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2688 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2691 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2692 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2693 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2694 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2695 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2698 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2699 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2700 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2701 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2702 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2703 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2704 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2707 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2708 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2709 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2710 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2711 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2712 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2714 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2715 under certain unusual conditions
2716 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2717 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2720 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2721 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2722 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2723 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2724 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2725 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2726 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2727 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2728 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2729 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2730 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2731 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2732 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2733 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2734 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2735 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2738 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2739 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2742 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2743 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2744 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2745 involving hard-linked directories
2746 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2747 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2748 character-special and block files
2751 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2752 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2753 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2754 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2755 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2756 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2757 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2758 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2759 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2761 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2762 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2763 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2764 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2765 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2766 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2767 specified on the command line.
2768 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2769 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2770 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2771 the first file untouched.
2772 * readlink: new program
2773 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2774 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2775 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2776 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2777 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2778 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2781 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2782 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2783 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2784 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2785 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2786 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2787 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2788 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2789 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2790 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2791 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2792 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2794 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2795 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2796 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2798 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2799 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2800 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2801 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2802 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2803 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2804 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2805 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2808 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2809 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2812 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2813 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2814 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2815 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2816 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2817 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2818 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2821 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2822 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2824 ========================================================================
2825 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2826 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2829 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2831 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2832 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2833 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2834 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2835 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2836 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2837 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2838 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2839 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2840 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2841 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2842 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2844 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2845 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2846 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2847 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2849 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2852 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2854 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2855 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2856 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2857 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2858 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2859 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2860 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2863 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2864 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2865 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2866 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2867 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2868 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2869 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2870 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2871 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2872 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2873 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2874 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2875 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2876 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2877 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2878 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2880 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2881 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2883 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2884 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2885 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2886 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2887 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2888 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2890 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2891 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2892 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2893 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2894 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2895 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2896 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2898 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2899 the source files in the following example:
2900 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2901 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2902 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2903 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2904 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2905 links between source files with --preserve=links
2906 * cp accepts new options:
2907 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2908 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2909 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2910 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2911 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2912 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2913 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2914 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2915 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2917 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2918 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2919 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2920 even though it's older than dest.
2921 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2922 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2923 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2924 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2925 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2927 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2928 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2929 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2930 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2931 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2932 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2933 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2935 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2936 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2937 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2939 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2940 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2941 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2942 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2943 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2944 This is the default.
2946 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2947 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2948 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2949 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2950 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2952 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2955 ========================================================================
2956 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2957 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2960 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2961 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2963 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2964 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2965 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2966 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2967 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2969 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2970 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2971 that specifies a non-directory
2974 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2975 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2976 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2977 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2978 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2979 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2980 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2981 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2982 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2983 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2984 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2985 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2986 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2987 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2988 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2989 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2990 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2991 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2992 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2993 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2994 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2995 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2996 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2997 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2999 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3000 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3001 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3003 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3005 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3006 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3008 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3009 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3010 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3011 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3012 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3014 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3015 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3016 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3017 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3018 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3020 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3022 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3023 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3024 * still more portability fixes
3025 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3026 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3028 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3030 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3032 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3034 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3035 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3036 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3037 there is any time remaining
3038 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3040 ========================================================================
3041 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3042 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3044 This package began as the union of the following:
3045 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3047 ========================================================================
3049 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3051 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3052 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3053 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3054 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3055 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3056 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.