1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-17) [unstable]
7 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
9 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
10 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic points to, instead.
11 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
13 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
14 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
16 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
17 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
18 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
20 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
21 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
23 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
24 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
25 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
26 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
28 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
29 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
31 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
32 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
33 the file system does not support it.
35 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
37 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
39 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
40 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
41 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
42 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
44 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
45 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
46 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
47 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
49 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
50 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
51 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
52 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
54 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
55 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
57 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
59 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
60 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
61 reporting incorrect results.
65 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
66 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
68 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
69 value happens to be -1.
71 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
73 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
74 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
76 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
77 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
79 printf has several changes:
81 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
82 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
84 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
85 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
86 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
88 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
89 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
92 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
93 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
95 rm (and mv when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
96 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
98 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
99 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
101 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
103 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
105 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
106 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
107 when first encountering the directory.
109 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
110 output; POSIX requires this.
112 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
113 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
114 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
115 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
116 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
117 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
118 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
120 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
121 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
122 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
124 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
125 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
127 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
129 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
131 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
132 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
133 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
134 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
136 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
140 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
141 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
142 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
143 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
144 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
146 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
147 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
148 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
150 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
151 is longer than PATH_MAX.
153 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
154 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
156 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
157 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
158 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
159 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
160 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
162 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
164 nocreat do not create the output file
165 excl fail if the output file already exists
166 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
167 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
169 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
171 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
172 direct use direct I/O for data
173 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
174 sync likewise, but also for metadata
175 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
176 nofollow do not follow symlinks
178 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
180 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
181 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
184 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
185 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
186 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
187 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
188 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
189 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
191 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
192 list of NUL-terminated file names.
194 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
195 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
196 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
198 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
199 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
201 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
202 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
204 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
205 for compatibility with bash.
207 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
208 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
209 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
210 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
212 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
213 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
215 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
217 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
218 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
219 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
221 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
224 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
226 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
227 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
228 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
229 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
230 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
231 an offset, not as a file name.
233 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
234 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
236 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
237 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
239 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
240 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
242 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
243 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
244 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
246 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
247 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
251 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
253 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
255 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
259 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
260 or more arguments between partitions.
262 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
263 holes in the destination.
265 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
266 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
267 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
268 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
269 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
270 terminates immediately.
272 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
274 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
276 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
277 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
278 not the empty string.
280 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
281 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
285 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
286 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
287 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
290 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
297 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
301 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
302 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
304 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
305 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
307 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
308 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
309 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
312 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
316 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
317 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
319 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
320 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
322 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
323 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
324 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
326 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
328 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
331 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
333 ** Configuration option
335 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
336 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
340 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
341 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
345 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
346 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
347 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
350 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
351 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
352 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
353 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
354 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
355 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
358 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
362 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
363 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
364 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
366 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
367 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
369 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
371 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
372 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
373 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
374 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
376 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
378 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
379 not just the ones that reference directories
381 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
382 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
384 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
385 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
386 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
388 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
389 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
390 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
391 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
392 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
393 ragged when a datum was too wide.
395 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
400 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
401 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
403 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
405 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
407 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
409 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
410 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
412 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
413 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
415 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
417 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
421 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
423 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
425 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
426 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
427 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
428 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
429 resolution is the best we can do right now.
431 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
432 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
434 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
435 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
437 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
438 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
440 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
441 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
442 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
446 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
447 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
448 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
449 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
450 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
451 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
452 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
453 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
454 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
455 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
456 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
457 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
458 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
459 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
461 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
463 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
464 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
466 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
468 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
470 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
471 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
473 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
475 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
476 without a trailing newline.
478 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
479 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
481 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
484 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
488 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
490 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
492 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
493 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
494 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
495 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
497 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
499 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
500 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
501 be printed without leading spaces.
503 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
504 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
509 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
510 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
511 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
513 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
515 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
516 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
518 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
519 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
521 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
522 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
524 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
526 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
528 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
530 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
531 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
533 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
535 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
537 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
538 byte offsets are specified.
541 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
544 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
547 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
548 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
549 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
550 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
551 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
552 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
553 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
554 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
555 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
556 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
557 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
558 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
559 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
560 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
561 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
562 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
563 directory where M has write access.
564 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
565 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
566 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
569 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
570 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
571 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
572 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
573 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
574 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
575 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
576 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
577 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
578 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
579 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
580 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
581 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
582 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
583 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
584 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
585 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
586 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
587 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
588 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
589 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
590 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
591 appeared one additional time.
593 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
594 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
595 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
596 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
599 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
600 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
601 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
602 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
603 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
604 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
605 if there were more than 338.
607 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
608 - false --help now exits nonzero
611 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
612 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
613 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
614 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
617 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
618 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
619 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
620 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
621 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
624 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
625 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
626 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
627 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
628 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
629 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
630 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
633 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
634 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
635 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
636 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
637 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
638 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
640 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
641 under certain unusual conditions
642 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
643 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
646 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
647 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
648 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
649 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
650 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
651 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
652 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
653 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
654 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
655 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
656 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
657 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
658 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
659 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
660 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
661 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
664 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
665 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
668 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
669 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
670 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
671 involving hard-linked directories
672 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
673 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
674 character-special and block files
677 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
678 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
679 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
680 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
681 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
682 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
683 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
684 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
685 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
687 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
688 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
689 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
690 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
691 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
692 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
693 specified on the command line.
694 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
695 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
696 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
697 the first file untouched.
698 * readlink: new program
699 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
700 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
701 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
702 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
703 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
704 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
707 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
708 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
709 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
710 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
711 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
712 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
713 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
714 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
715 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
716 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
717 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
718 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
720 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
721 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
722 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
724 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
725 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
726 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
727 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
728 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
729 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
730 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
731 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
734 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
735 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
738 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
739 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
740 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
741 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
742 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
743 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
744 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
747 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
748 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
750 ========================================================================
751 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
752 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
755 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
757 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
758 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
759 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
760 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
761 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
762 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
763 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
764 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
765 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
766 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
767 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
768 The old options will continue to work for a while.
770 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
771 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
772 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
773 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
775 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
778 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
780 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
781 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
782 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
783 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
784 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
785 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
786 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
789 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
790 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
791 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
792 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
793 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
794 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
795 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
796 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
797 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
798 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
799 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
800 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
801 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
802 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
803 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
804 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
806 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
807 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
809 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
810 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
811 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
812 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
813 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
814 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
816 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
817 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
818 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
819 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
820 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
821 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
822 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
824 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
825 the source files in the following example:
826 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
827 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
828 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
829 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
830 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
831 links between source files with --preserve=links
832 * cp accepts new options:
833 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
834 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
835 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
836 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
837 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
838 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
839 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
840 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
841 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
843 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
844 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
845 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
846 even though it's older than dest.
847 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
848 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
849 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
850 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
851 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
853 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
854 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
855 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
856 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
857 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
858 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
859 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
861 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
862 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
863 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
865 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
866 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
867 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
868 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
869 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
872 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
873 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
874 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
875 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
876 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
878 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
881 ========================================================================
882 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
883 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
886 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
887 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
889 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
890 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
891 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
892 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
893 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
895 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
896 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
897 that specifies a non-directory
900 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
901 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
902 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
903 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
904 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
905 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
906 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
907 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
908 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
909 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
910 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
911 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
912 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
913 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
914 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
915 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
916 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
917 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
918 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
919 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
920 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
921 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
922 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
923 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
925 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
926 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
927 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
929 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
931 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
932 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
934 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
935 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
936 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
937 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
938 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
940 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
941 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
942 required support; from Bruno Haible.
943 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
944 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
946 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
948 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
949 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
950 * still more portability fixes
951 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
952 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
954 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
956 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
958 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
960 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
961 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
962 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
963 there is any time remaining
964 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
966 ========================================================================
967 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
968 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
970 This package began as the union of the following:
971 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
projects / platform / upstream / coreutils.git / blob