1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6-pre (????-??-??)
6 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
10 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
11 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
12 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
13 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
14 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
16 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
20 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
23 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
27 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
28 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
29 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
30 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
32 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
33 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
35 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
36 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
37 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
40 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
42 ** Improved robustness
44 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
45 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
47 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
48 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
49 or NFS-mounted partition.
51 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
52 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
56 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
57 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
58 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
59 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
60 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
61 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
63 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
64 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
66 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
67 or neglect to report file removal.
69 For the "groups" command:
71 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
72 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
74 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
76 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
78 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
82 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
83 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
86 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
88 ** Changes in behavior
90 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
91 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
92 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
93 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
95 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
96 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
97 a final `./' or `../' component.
99 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
100 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
103 ** Infrastructure changes
105 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
106 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
107 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
108 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
112 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
115 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
116 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
117 dirent.d_type support.
119 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
120 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
122 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
123 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
124 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
125 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
128 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
130 ** Changes in behavior
132 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
136 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
137 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
141 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
142 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
143 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
145 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
146 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
148 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
149 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
151 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
153 ** Improved robustness
155 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
156 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
157 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
159 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
160 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
163 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
164 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
166 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
167 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
169 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
170 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
172 ** Changes in behavior
174 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
175 where the two are distinct.
177 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
178 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
179 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
180 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
181 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
182 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
183 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
184 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
185 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
186 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
187 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
188 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
189 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
190 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
191 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
192 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
193 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
195 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
196 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
197 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
199 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
200 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
201 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
202 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
205 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
206 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
210 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
211 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
212 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
213 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
215 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
216 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
217 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
219 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
220 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
221 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
222 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
223 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
226 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
227 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
229 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
230 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
231 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
232 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
234 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
235 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
236 successful and the output is easier to parse.
238 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
239 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
240 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
241 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
243 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
244 and sticky) with the -m option.
246 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
247 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
248 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
249 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
250 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
252 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
253 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
255 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
259 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
260 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
261 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
262 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
264 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
266 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
268 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
269 silently ignoring one of them.
271 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
272 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
273 containing this change was 5.92.
275 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
276 automatically newline terminated.
278 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
279 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
280 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
281 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
284 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
285 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
286 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
289 ** Scheduled for removal
291 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
292 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
294 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
295 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
296 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
297 command to unlink a directory.
299 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
300 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
301 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
302 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
306 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
307 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
308 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
309 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
310 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
311 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
315 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
316 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
318 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
320 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
321 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
322 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
324 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
325 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
328 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
329 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
331 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
332 list directories before files.
334 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
335 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
336 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
337 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
340 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
342 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
344 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
345 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
346 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
348 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
349 list of NUL-terminated file names.
353 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
354 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
355 usually printing nothing.
357 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
359 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
360 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
361 them with hard-linked directories.
363 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
364 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
365 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
367 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
368 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
369 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
371 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
374 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
375 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
377 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
378 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
380 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
381 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
383 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
384 all command-line arguments.
386 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
388 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
390 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
391 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
393 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
395 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
396 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
397 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
398 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
399 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
401 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
402 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
404 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
405 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
406 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
407 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
409 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
411 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
415 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
416 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
418 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
419 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
421 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
422 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
424 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
425 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
427 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
428 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
430 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
432 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
433 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
434 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
437 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
439 ** Build-related bug fixes
441 installing .mo files would fail
444 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
448 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
450 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
453 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
457 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
458 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
462 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
464 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
465 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
467 ** Deprecated options
469 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
470 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
472 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
476 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
478 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
479 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
480 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
481 conforming to older POSIX versions.
483 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
486 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
492 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
497 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
499 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
501 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
502 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
503 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
505 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
506 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
507 problematic usages. These include:
509 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
510 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
511 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
512 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
513 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
514 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
515 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
516 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
517 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
519 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
520 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
522 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
523 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
524 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
525 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
527 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
528 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
529 between binary and text files.
531 The following programs now always use text input/output:
535 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
539 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
540 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
543 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
545 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
546 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
548 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
549 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
550 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
552 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
554 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
556 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
557 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
558 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
562 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
564 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
565 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
567 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
568 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
569 blocks until F contains N blocks.
573 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
574 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
578 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
579 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
580 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
584 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
585 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
589 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
591 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
593 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
597 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
598 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
599 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
601 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
602 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
603 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
604 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
605 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
607 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
611 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
612 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
613 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
615 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
617 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
618 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
619 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
620 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
622 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
624 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
625 rather than silently wrapping around.
627 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
628 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
630 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
631 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
633 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
634 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
635 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
638 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
640 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
642 ** Improved robustness
644 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
645 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
646 no matter how large the result.
648 ** Improved portability
650 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
651 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
653 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
655 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
656 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
657 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
659 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
660 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
664 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
665 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
667 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
669 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
670 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
671 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
672 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
674 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
675 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
677 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
678 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
679 categories if not specified by dircolors.
681 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
683 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
684 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
686 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
687 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
689 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
691 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
692 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
694 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
695 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
697 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
698 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
699 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
701 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
703 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
705 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
709 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
711 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
712 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
713 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
715 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
716 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
718 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
719 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
720 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
722 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
723 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
725 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
726 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
727 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
728 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
730 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
731 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
733 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
734 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
735 the file system does not support it.
737 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
739 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
740 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
742 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
744 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
745 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
747 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
748 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
749 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
750 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
752 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
753 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
756 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
757 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
758 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
759 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
761 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
762 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
763 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
764 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
766 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
767 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
769 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
771 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
772 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
773 reporting incorrect results.
777 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
778 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
780 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
783 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
785 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
786 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
788 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
789 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
791 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
794 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
795 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
796 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
797 the file name does not look like a page range.
799 printf has several changes:
801 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
802 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
804 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
805 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
806 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
808 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
809 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
812 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
813 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
815 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
816 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
818 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
820 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
821 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
823 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
825 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
827 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
828 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
829 when first encountering the directory.
833 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
834 output; POSIX requires this.
836 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
837 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
839 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
841 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
842 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
844 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
845 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
847 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
848 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
849 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
850 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
851 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
852 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
853 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
855 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
856 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
857 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
859 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
860 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
862 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
864 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
866 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
867 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
868 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
869 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
871 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
875 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
876 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
877 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
878 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
879 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
881 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
882 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
883 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
885 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
886 is longer than PATH_MAX.
888 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
889 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
891 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
892 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
893 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
894 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
895 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
897 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
898 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
900 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
901 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
903 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
905 nocreat do not create the output file
906 excl fail if the output file already exists
907 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
908 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
910 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
912 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
913 direct use direct I/O for data
914 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
915 sync likewise, but also for metadata
916 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
917 nofollow do not follow symlinks
918 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
920 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
922 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
923 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
926 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
927 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
928 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
929 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
930 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
931 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
933 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
934 list of NUL-terminated file names.
936 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
939 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
941 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
943 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
944 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
946 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
947 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
948 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
950 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
951 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
952 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
954 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
956 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
957 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
959 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
960 for compatibility with bash.
962 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
964 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
965 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
966 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
967 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
969 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
970 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
972 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
974 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
975 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
976 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
978 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
981 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
983 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
984 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
985 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
986 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
987 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
988 an offset, not as a file name.
990 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
991 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
993 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
994 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
996 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
997 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
999 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1000 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1001 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1003 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1004 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1006 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1007 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1011 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1013 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1015 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1019 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1020 or more arguments between partitions.
1022 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1023 holes in the destination.
1025 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1026 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1027 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1028 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1029 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1030 terminates immediately.
1032 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1034 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1036 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1037 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1038 not the empty string.
1040 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1041 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1045 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1046 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1047 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1050 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1057 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1061 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1062 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1064 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1065 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1067 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1068 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1069 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1072 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1076 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1077 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1079 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1080 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1082 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1083 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1084 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1086 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1088 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1091 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1093 ** Configuration option
1095 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1096 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1100 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1101 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1105 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1106 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1107 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1110 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1111 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1112 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1113 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1114 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1115 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1116 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1119 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1123 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1124 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1125 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1127 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1128 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1130 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1132 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1133 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1134 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1135 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1137 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1139 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1140 not just the ones that reference directories
1142 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1143 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1145 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1146 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1147 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1149 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1150 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1151 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1152 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1153 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1154 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1156 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1161 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1162 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1164 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1166 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1168 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1170 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1171 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1173 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1174 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1176 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1178 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1182 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1184 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1186 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1187 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1188 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1189 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1190 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1192 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1193 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1195 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1196 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1198 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1199 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1201 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1202 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1203 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1207 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1208 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1209 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1210 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1211 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1212 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1213 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1214 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1215 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1216 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1217 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1218 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1219 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1220 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1222 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1224 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1225 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1227 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1229 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1231 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1232 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1234 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1236 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1237 without a trailing newline.
1239 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1240 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1242 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1245 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1249 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1251 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1253 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1254 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1255 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1256 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1258 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1260 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1261 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1262 be printed without leading spaces.
1264 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1265 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1270 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1271 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1272 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1274 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1276 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1277 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1279 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1280 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1282 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1283 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1285 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1287 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1289 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1291 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1292 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1294 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1296 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1298 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1299 byte offsets are specified.
1302 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1305 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1308 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1309 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1310 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1311 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1312 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1313 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1314 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1315 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1316 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1317 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1318 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1319 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1320 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1321 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1322 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1323 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1324 directory where M has write access.
1325 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1326 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1327 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1330 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1331 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1332 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1333 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1334 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1335 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1336 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1337 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1338 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1339 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1340 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1341 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1342 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1343 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1344 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1345 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1346 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1347 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1348 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1349 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1350 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1351 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1352 appeared one additional time.
1354 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1355 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1356 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1357 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1360 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1361 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1362 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1363 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1364 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1365 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1366 if there were more than 338.
1368 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1369 - false --help now exits nonzero
1372 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1373 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1374 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1375 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1378 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1379 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1380 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1381 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1382 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1385 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1386 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1387 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1388 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1389 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1390 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1391 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1394 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1395 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1396 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1397 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1398 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1399 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1401 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1402 under certain unusual conditions
1403 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1404 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1407 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1408 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1409 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1410 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1411 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1412 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1413 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1414 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1415 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1416 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1417 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1418 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1419 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1420 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1421 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1422 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1425 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1426 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1429 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1430 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1431 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1432 involving hard-linked directories
1433 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1434 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1435 character-special and block files
1438 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1439 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1440 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1441 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1442 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1443 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1444 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1445 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1446 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1448 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1449 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1450 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1451 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1452 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1453 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1454 specified on the command line.
1455 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1456 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1457 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1458 the first file untouched.
1459 * readlink: new program
1460 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1461 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1462 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1463 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1464 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1465 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1468 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1469 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1470 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1471 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1472 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1473 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1474 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1475 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1476 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1477 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1478 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1479 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1481 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1482 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1483 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1485 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1486 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1487 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1488 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1489 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1490 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1491 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1492 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1495 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1496 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1499 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1500 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1501 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1502 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1503 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1504 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1505 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1508 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1509 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1511 ========================================================================
1512 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1513 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1516 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1518 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1519 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1520 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1521 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1522 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1523 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1524 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1525 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1526 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1527 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1528 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1529 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1531 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1532 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1533 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1534 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1536 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1539 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1541 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1542 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1543 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1544 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1545 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1546 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1547 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1550 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1551 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1552 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1553 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1554 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1555 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1556 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1557 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1558 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1559 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1560 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1561 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1562 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1563 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1564 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1565 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1567 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1568 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1570 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1571 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1572 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1573 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1574 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1575 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1577 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1578 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1579 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1580 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1581 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1582 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1583 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1585 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1586 the source files in the following example:
1587 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1588 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1589 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1590 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1591 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1592 links between source files with --preserve=links
1593 * cp accepts new options:
1594 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1595 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1596 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1597 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1598 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1599 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1600 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1601 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1602 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1604 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1605 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1606 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1607 even though it's older than dest.
1608 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1609 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1610 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1611 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1612 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1614 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1615 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1616 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1617 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1618 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1619 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1620 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1622 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1623 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1624 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1626 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1627 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1628 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1629 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1630 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1631 This is the default.
1633 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1634 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1635 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1636 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1637 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1639 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1642 ========================================================================
1643 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1644 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1647 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1648 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1650 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1651 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1652 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1653 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1654 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1656 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1657 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1658 that specifies a non-directory
1661 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1662 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1663 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1664 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1665 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1666 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1667 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1668 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1669 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1670 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1671 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1672 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1673 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1674 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1675 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1676 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1677 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1678 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1679 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1680 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1681 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1682 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1683 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1684 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1686 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1687 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1688 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1690 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1692 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1693 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1695 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1696 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1697 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1698 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1699 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1701 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1702 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1703 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1704 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1705 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1707 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1709 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1710 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1711 * still more portability fixes
1712 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1713 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1715 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1717 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1719 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1721 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1722 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1723 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1724 there is any time remaining
1725 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1727 ========================================================================
1728 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1729 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1731 This package began as the union of the following:
1732 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1734 ========================================================================
1736 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1739 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1740 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1741 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1742 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1743 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1744 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.