1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 ** Changes in behavior
12 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
13 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
15 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
16 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
17 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
21 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
23 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
24 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
25 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
27 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
28 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
29 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
34 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
35 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
36 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
37 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
39 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
40 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
41 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
42 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
43 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
44 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
47 ** Remove deprecated options
49 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
50 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
51 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
52 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
53 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
57 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
58 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
59 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
60 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
61 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
62 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
63 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
64 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
65 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
66 the destination is a symlink.
68 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
70 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
71 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
73 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
75 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
76 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
78 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
79 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
81 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
82 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
83 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
84 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
86 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
87 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
88 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
90 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
91 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
93 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
94 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
96 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
97 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
99 ** Improved robustness
101 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
102 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
105 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
109 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
111 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
112 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
113 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
115 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
116 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
118 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
119 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
120 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
122 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
126 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
127 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
129 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
130 support but with insufficient /proc support.
132 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
133 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
135 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
136 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
137 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
138 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
139 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
140 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
142 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
143 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
146 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
147 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
149 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
152 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
153 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
154 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
156 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
157 directory is unreadable.
159 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
160 Before it would print nothing.
162 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
166 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
167 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
168 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
170 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
171 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
172 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
173 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
176 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
180 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
181 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
182 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
183 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
184 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
185 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
186 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
188 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
189 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
190 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
191 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
192 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
193 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
194 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
195 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
197 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
198 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
199 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
202 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
206 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
207 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
209 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
210 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
211 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
213 ** Improved robustness
215 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
216 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
217 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
220 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
224 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
225 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
226 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
227 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
228 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
230 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
234 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
237 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
241 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
242 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
243 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
244 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
246 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
247 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
249 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
250 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
251 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
254 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
256 ** Improved robustness
258 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
259 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
261 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
262 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
263 or NFS-mounted partition.
265 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
266 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
270 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
271 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
272 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
273 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
274 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
275 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
277 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
278 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
280 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
281 or neglect to report file removal.
283 For the "groups" command:
285 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
286 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
288 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
290 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
292 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
296 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
297 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
300 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
302 ** Changes in behavior
304 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
305 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
306 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
307 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
309 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
310 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
311 a final `./' or `../' component.
313 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
314 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
317 ** Infrastructure changes
319 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
320 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
321 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
322 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
326 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
329 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
330 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
331 dirent.d_type support.
333 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
334 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
336 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
337 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
338 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
339 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
342 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
344 ** Changes in behavior
346 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
350 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
351 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
355 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
356 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
357 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
359 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
360 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
362 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
363 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
365 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
367 ** Improved robustness
369 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
370 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
371 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
373 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
374 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
377 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
378 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
380 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
381 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
383 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
384 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
386 ** Changes in behavior
388 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
389 where the two are distinct.
391 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
392 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
393 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
394 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
395 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
396 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
397 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
398 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
399 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
400 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
401 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
402 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
403 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
404 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
405 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
406 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
407 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
409 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
410 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
411 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
413 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
414 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
415 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
416 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
419 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
420 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
424 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
425 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
426 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
427 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
429 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
430 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
431 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
433 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
434 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
435 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
436 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
437 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
440 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
441 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
443 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
444 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
445 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
446 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
448 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
449 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
450 successful and the output is easier to parse.
452 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
453 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
454 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
455 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
457 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
458 and sticky) with the -m option.
460 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
461 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
462 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
463 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
464 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
466 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
467 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
469 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
473 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
474 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
475 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
476 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
478 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
480 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
482 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
483 silently ignoring one of them.
485 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
486 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
487 containing this change was 5.92.
489 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
490 automatically newline terminated.
492 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
493 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
494 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
495 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
498 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
499 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
500 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
503 ** Scheduled for removal
505 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
506 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
508 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
509 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
510 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
511 command to unlink a directory.
513 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
514 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
515 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
516 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
520 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
521 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
522 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
523 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
524 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
525 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
529 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
530 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
532 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
534 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
535 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
536 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
538 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
539 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
542 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
543 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
545 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
546 list directories before files.
548 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
549 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
550 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
551 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
554 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
556 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
558 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
559 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
560 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
562 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
563 list of NUL-terminated file names.
567 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
568 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
569 usually printing nothing.
571 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
573 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
574 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
575 them with hard-linked directories.
577 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
578 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
579 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
581 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
582 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
583 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
585 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
588 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
589 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
591 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
592 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
594 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
595 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
597 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
598 all command-line arguments.
600 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
602 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
604 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
605 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
607 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
609 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
610 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
611 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
612 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
613 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
615 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
616 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
618 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
619 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
620 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
621 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
623 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
625 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
629 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
630 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
632 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
633 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
635 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
636 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
638 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
639 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
641 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
642 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
644 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
646 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
647 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
648 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
651 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
653 ** Build-related bug fixes
655 installing .mo files would fail
658 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
662 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
664 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
667 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
671 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
672 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
676 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
678 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
679 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
681 ** Deprecated options
683 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
684 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
686 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
690 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
692 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
693 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
694 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
695 conforming to older POSIX versions.
697 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
700 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
706 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
711 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
713 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
715 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
716 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
717 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
719 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
720 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
721 problematic usages. These include:
723 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
724 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
725 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
726 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
727 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
728 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
729 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
730 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
731 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
733 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
734 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
736 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
737 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
738 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
739 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
741 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
742 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
743 between binary and text files.
745 The following programs now always use text input/output:
749 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
753 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
754 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
757 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
759 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
760 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
762 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
763 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
764 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
766 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
768 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
770 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
771 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
772 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
776 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
778 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
779 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
781 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
782 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
783 blocks until F contains N blocks.
787 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
788 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
792 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
793 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
794 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
798 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
799 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
803 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
805 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
807 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
811 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
812 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
813 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
815 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
816 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
817 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
818 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
819 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
821 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
825 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
826 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
827 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
829 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
831 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
832 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
833 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
834 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
836 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
838 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
839 rather than silently wrapping around.
841 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
842 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
844 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
845 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
847 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
848 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
849 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
852 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
854 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
856 ** Improved robustness
858 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
859 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
860 no matter how large the result.
862 ** Improved portability
864 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
865 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
867 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
869 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
870 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
871 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
873 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
874 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
878 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
879 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
881 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
883 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
884 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
885 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
886 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
888 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
889 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
891 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
892 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
893 categories if not specified by dircolors.
895 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
897 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
898 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
900 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
901 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
903 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
905 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
906 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
908 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
909 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
911 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
912 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
913 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
915 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
917 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
919 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
923 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
925 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
926 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
927 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
929 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
930 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
932 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
933 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
934 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
936 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
937 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
939 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
940 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
941 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
942 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
944 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
945 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
947 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
948 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
949 the file system does not support it.
951 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
953 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
954 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
956 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
958 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
959 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
961 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
962 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
963 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
964 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
966 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
967 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
970 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
971 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
972 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
973 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
975 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
976 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
977 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
978 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
980 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
981 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
983 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
985 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
986 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
987 reporting incorrect results.
991 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
992 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
994 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
997 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
999 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1000 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1002 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1003 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1005 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1008 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1009 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1010 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1011 the file name does not look like a page range.
1013 printf has several changes:
1015 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1016 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1018 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1019 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1020 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1022 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1023 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1026 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1027 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1029 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1030 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1032 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1034 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1035 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1037 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1039 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1041 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1042 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1043 when first encountering the directory.
1047 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1048 output; POSIX requires this.
1050 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1051 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1053 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1055 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1056 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1058 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1059 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1061 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1062 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1063 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1064 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1065 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1066 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1067 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1069 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1070 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1071 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1073 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1074 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1076 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1078 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1080 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1081 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1082 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1083 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1085 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1089 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1090 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1091 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1092 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1093 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1095 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1096 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1097 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1099 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1100 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1102 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1103 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1105 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1106 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1107 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1108 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1109 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1111 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1112 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1114 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1115 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1117 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1119 nocreat do not create the output file
1120 excl fail if the output file already exists
1121 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1122 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1124 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1126 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1127 direct use direct I/O for data
1128 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1129 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1130 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1131 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1132 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1134 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1136 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1137 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1140 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1141 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1142 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1143 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1144 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1145 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1147 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1148 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1150 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1153 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1155 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1157 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1158 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1160 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1161 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1162 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1164 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1165 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1166 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1168 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1170 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1171 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1173 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1174 for compatibility with bash.
1176 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1178 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1179 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1180 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1181 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1183 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1184 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1186 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1187 ls supports TABSIZE.
1188 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1189 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1190 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1192 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1195 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1197 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1198 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1199 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1200 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1201 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1202 an offset, not as a file name.
1204 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1205 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1207 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1208 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1210 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1211 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1213 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1214 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1215 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1217 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1218 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1220 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1221 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1225 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1227 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1229 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1233 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1234 or more arguments between partitions.
1236 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1237 holes in the destination.
1239 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1240 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1241 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1242 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1243 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1244 terminates immediately.
1246 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1248 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1250 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1251 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1252 not the empty string.
1254 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1255 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1259 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1260 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1261 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1264 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1271 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1275 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1276 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1278 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1279 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1281 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1282 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1283 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1286 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1290 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1291 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1293 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1294 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1296 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1297 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1298 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1300 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1302 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1305 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1307 ** Configuration option
1309 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1310 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1314 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1315 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1319 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1320 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1321 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1324 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1325 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1326 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1327 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1328 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1329 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1330 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1333 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1337 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1338 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1339 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1341 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1342 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1344 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1346 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1347 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1348 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1349 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1351 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1353 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1354 not just the ones that reference directories
1356 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1357 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1359 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1360 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1361 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1363 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1364 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1365 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1366 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1367 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1368 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1370 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1375 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1376 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1378 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1380 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1382 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1384 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1385 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1387 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1388 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1390 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1392 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1396 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1398 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1400 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1401 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1402 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1403 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1404 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1406 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1407 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1409 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1410 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1412 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1413 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1415 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1416 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1417 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1421 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1422 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1423 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1424 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1425 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1426 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1427 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1428 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1429 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1430 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1431 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1432 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1433 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1434 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1436 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1438 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1439 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1441 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1443 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1445 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1446 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1448 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1450 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1451 without a trailing newline.
1453 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1454 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1456 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1459 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1463 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1465 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1467 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1468 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1469 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1470 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1472 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1474 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1475 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1476 be printed without leading spaces.
1478 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1479 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1484 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1485 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1486 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1488 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1490 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1491 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1493 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1494 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1496 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1497 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1499 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1501 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1503 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1505 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1506 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1508 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1510 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1512 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1513 byte offsets are specified.
1516 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1519 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1522 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1523 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1524 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1525 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1526 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1527 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1528 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1529 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1530 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1531 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1532 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1533 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1534 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1535 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1536 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1537 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1538 directory where M has write access.
1539 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1540 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1541 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1544 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1545 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1546 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1547 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1548 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1549 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1550 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1551 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1552 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1553 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1554 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1555 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1556 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1557 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1558 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1559 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1560 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1561 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1562 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1563 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1564 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1565 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1566 appeared one additional time.
1568 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1569 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1570 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1571 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1574 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1575 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1576 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1577 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1578 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1579 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1580 if there were more than 338.
1582 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1583 - false --help now exits nonzero
1586 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1587 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1588 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1589 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1592 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1593 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1594 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1595 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1596 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1599 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1600 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1601 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1602 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1603 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1604 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1605 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1608 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1609 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1610 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1611 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1612 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1613 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1615 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1616 under certain unusual conditions
1617 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1618 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1621 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1622 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1623 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1624 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1625 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1626 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1627 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1628 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1629 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1630 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1631 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1632 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1633 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1634 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1635 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1636 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1639 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1640 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1643 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1644 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1645 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1646 involving hard-linked directories
1647 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1648 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1649 character-special and block files
1652 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1653 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1654 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1655 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1656 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1657 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1658 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1659 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1660 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1662 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1663 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1664 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1665 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1666 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1667 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1668 specified on the command line.
1669 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1670 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1671 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1672 the first file untouched.
1673 * readlink: new program
1674 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1675 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1676 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1677 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1678 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1679 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1682 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1683 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1684 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1685 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1686 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1687 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1688 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1689 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1690 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1691 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1692 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1693 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1695 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1696 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1697 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1699 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1700 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1701 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1702 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1703 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1704 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1705 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1706 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1709 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1710 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1713 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1714 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1715 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1716 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1717 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1718 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1719 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1722 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1723 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1725 ========================================================================
1726 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1727 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1730 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1732 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1733 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1734 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1735 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1736 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1737 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1738 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1739 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1740 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1741 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1742 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1743 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1745 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1746 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1747 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1748 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1750 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1753 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1755 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1756 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1757 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1758 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1759 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1760 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1761 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1764 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1765 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1766 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1767 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1768 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1769 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1770 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1771 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1772 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1773 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1774 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1775 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1776 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1777 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1778 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1779 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1781 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1782 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1784 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1785 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1786 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1787 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1788 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1789 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1791 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1792 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1793 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1794 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1795 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1796 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1797 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1799 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1800 the source files in the following example:
1801 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1802 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1803 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1804 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1805 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1806 links between source files with --preserve=links
1807 * cp accepts new options:
1808 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1809 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1810 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1811 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1812 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1813 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1814 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1815 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1816 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1818 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1819 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1820 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1821 even though it's older than dest.
1822 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1823 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1824 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1825 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1826 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1828 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1829 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1830 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1831 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1832 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1833 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1834 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1836 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1837 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1838 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1840 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1841 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1842 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1843 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1844 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1845 This is the default.
1847 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1848 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1849 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1850 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1851 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1853 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1856 ========================================================================
1857 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1858 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1861 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1862 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1864 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1865 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1866 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1867 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1868 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1870 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1871 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1872 that specifies a non-directory
1875 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1876 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1877 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1878 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1879 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1880 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1881 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1882 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1883 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1884 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1885 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1886 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1887 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1888 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1889 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1890 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1891 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1892 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1893 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1894 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1895 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1896 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1897 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1898 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1900 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1901 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1902 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1904 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1906 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1907 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1909 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1910 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1911 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1912 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1913 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1915 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1916 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1917 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1918 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1919 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1921 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1923 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1924 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1925 * still more portability fixes
1926 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1927 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1929 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1931 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1933 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1935 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1936 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1937 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1938 there is any time remaining
1939 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1941 ========================================================================
1942 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1943 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1945 This package began as the union of the following:
1946 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1948 ========================================================================
1950 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1953 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1954 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1955 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1956 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1957 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1958 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.