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 attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
58 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
59 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
60 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
62 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
63 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
64 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
65 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
66 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
67 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
68 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
69 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
70 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
71 the destination is a symlink.
73 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
75 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
76 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
78 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
80 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
81 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
83 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
86 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
87 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
89 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
90 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
91 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
92 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
94 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
95 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
96 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
98 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
99 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
101 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
102 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
103 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
105 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
106 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
108 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
109 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
111 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
112 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
114 ** Improved robustness
116 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
117 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
120 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
124 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
126 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
127 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
128 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
130 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
131 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
133 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
137 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
138 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
140 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
141 support but with insufficient /proc support.
143 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
144 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
146 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
147 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
148 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
149 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
150 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
151 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
153 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
154 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
157 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
158 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
160 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
163 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
164 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
165 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
167 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
168 directory is unreadable.
170 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
171 Before it would print nothing.
173 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
177 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
178 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
179 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
181 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
182 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
183 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
184 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
187 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
191 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
192 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
193 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
194 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
195 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
196 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
197 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
199 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
200 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
201 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
202 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
203 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
204 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
205 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
206 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
208 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
209 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
210 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
213 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
217 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
218 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
220 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
221 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
222 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
224 ** Improved robustness
226 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
227 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
228 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
231 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
235 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
236 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
237 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
238 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
239 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
241 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
245 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
248 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
252 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
253 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
254 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
255 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
257 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
258 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
260 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
261 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
262 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
265 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
267 ** Improved robustness
269 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
270 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
272 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
273 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
274 or NFS-mounted partition.
276 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
277 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
281 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
282 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
283 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
284 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
285 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
286 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
288 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
289 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
291 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
292 or neglect to report file removal.
294 For the "groups" command:
296 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
297 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
299 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
301 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
303 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
307 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
308 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
311 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
313 ** Changes in behavior
315 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
316 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
317 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
318 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
320 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
321 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
322 a final `./' or `../' component.
324 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
325 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
328 ** Infrastructure changes
330 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
331 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
332 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
333 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
337 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
340 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
341 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
342 dirent.d_type support.
344 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
345 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
347 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
348 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
349 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
350 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
353 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
355 ** Changes in behavior
357 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
361 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
362 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
366 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
367 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
368 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
370 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
371 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
373 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
374 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
376 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
378 ** Improved robustness
380 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
381 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
382 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
384 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
385 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
388 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
389 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
391 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
392 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
394 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
395 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
397 ** Changes in behavior
399 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
400 where the two are distinct.
402 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
403 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
404 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
405 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
406 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
407 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
408 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
409 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
410 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
411 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
412 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
413 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
414 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
415 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
416 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
417 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
418 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
420 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
421 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
422 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
424 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
425 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
426 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
427 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
430 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
431 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
435 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
436 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
437 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
438 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
440 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
441 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
442 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
444 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
445 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
446 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
447 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
448 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
451 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
452 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
454 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
455 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
456 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
457 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
459 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
460 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
461 successful and the output is easier to parse.
463 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
464 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
465 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
466 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
468 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
469 and sticky) with the -m option.
471 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
472 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
473 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
474 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
475 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
477 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
478 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
480 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
484 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
485 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
486 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
487 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
489 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
491 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
493 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
494 silently ignoring one of them.
496 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
497 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
498 containing this change was 5.92.
500 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
501 automatically newline terminated.
503 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
504 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
505 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
506 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
509 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
510 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
511 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
514 ** Scheduled for removal
516 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
517 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
519 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
520 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
521 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
522 command to unlink a directory.
524 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
525 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
526 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
527 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
531 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
532 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
533 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
534 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
535 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
536 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
540 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
541 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
543 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
545 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
546 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
547 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
549 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
550 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
553 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
554 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
556 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
557 list directories before files.
559 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
560 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
561 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
562 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
565 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
567 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
569 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
570 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
571 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
573 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
574 list of NUL-terminated file names.
578 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
579 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
580 usually printing nothing.
582 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
584 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
585 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
586 them with hard-linked directories.
588 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
589 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
590 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
592 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
593 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
594 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
596 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
599 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
600 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
602 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
603 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
605 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
606 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
608 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
609 all command-line arguments.
611 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
613 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
615 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
616 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
618 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
620 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
621 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
622 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
623 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
624 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
626 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
627 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
629 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
630 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
631 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
632 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
634 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
636 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
640 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
641 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
643 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
644 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
646 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
647 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
649 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
650 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
652 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
653 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
655 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
657 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
658 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
659 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
662 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
664 ** Build-related bug fixes
666 installing .mo files would fail
669 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
673 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
675 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
678 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
682 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
683 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
687 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
689 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
690 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
692 ** Deprecated options
694 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
695 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
697 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
701 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
703 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
704 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
705 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
706 conforming to older POSIX versions.
708 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
711 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
717 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
722 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
724 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
726 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
727 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
728 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
730 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
731 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
732 problematic usages. These include:
734 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
735 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
736 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
737 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
738 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
739 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
740 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
741 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
742 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
744 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
745 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
747 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
748 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
749 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
750 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
752 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
753 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
754 between binary and text files.
756 The following programs now always use text input/output:
760 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
764 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
765 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
768 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
770 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
771 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
773 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
774 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
775 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
777 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
779 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
781 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
782 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
783 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
787 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
789 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
790 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
792 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
793 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
794 blocks until F contains N blocks.
798 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
799 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
803 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
804 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
805 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
809 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
810 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
814 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
816 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
818 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
822 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
823 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
824 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
826 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
827 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
828 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
829 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
830 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
832 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
836 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
837 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
838 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
840 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
842 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
843 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
844 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
845 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
847 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
849 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
850 rather than silently wrapping around.
852 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
853 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
855 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
856 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
858 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
859 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
860 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
863 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
865 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
867 ** Improved robustness
869 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
870 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
871 no matter how large the result.
873 ** Improved portability
875 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
876 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
878 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
880 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
881 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
882 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
884 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
885 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
889 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
890 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
892 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
894 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
895 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
896 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
897 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
899 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
900 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
902 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
903 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
904 categories if not specified by dircolors.
906 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
908 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
909 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
911 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
912 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
914 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
916 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
917 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
919 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
920 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
922 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
923 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
924 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
926 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
928 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
930 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
934 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
936 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
937 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
938 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
940 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
941 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
943 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
944 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
945 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
947 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
948 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
950 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
951 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
952 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
953 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
955 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
956 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
958 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
959 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
960 the file system does not support it.
962 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
964 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
965 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
967 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
969 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
970 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
972 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
973 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
974 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
975 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
977 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
978 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
981 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
982 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
983 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
984 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
986 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
987 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
988 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
989 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
991 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
992 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
994 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
996 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
997 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
998 reporting incorrect results.
1002 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1003 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1005 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1008 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1010 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1011 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1013 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1014 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1016 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1019 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1020 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1021 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1022 the file name does not look like a page range.
1024 printf has several changes:
1026 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1027 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1029 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1030 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1031 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1033 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1034 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1037 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1038 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1040 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1041 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1043 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1045 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1046 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1048 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1050 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1052 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1053 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1054 when first encountering the directory.
1058 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1059 output; POSIX requires this.
1061 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1062 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1064 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1066 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1067 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1069 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1070 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1072 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1073 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1074 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1075 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1076 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1077 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1078 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1080 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1081 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1082 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1084 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1085 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1087 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1089 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1091 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1092 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1093 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1094 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1096 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1100 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1101 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1102 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1103 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1104 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1106 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1107 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1108 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1110 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1111 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1113 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1114 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1116 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1117 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1118 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1119 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1120 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1122 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1123 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1125 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1126 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1128 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1130 nocreat do not create the output file
1131 excl fail if the output file already exists
1132 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1133 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1135 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1137 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1138 direct use direct I/O for data
1139 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1140 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1141 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1142 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1143 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1145 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1147 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1148 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1151 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1152 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1153 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1154 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1155 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1156 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1158 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1159 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1161 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1164 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1166 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1168 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1169 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1171 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1172 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1173 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1175 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1176 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1177 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1179 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1181 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1182 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1184 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1185 for compatibility with bash.
1187 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1189 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1190 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1191 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1192 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1194 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1195 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1197 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1198 ls supports TABSIZE.
1199 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1200 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1201 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1203 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1206 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1208 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1209 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1210 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1211 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1212 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1213 an offset, not as a file name.
1215 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1216 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1218 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1219 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1221 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1222 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1224 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1225 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1226 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1228 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1229 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1231 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1232 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1236 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1238 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1240 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1244 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1245 or more arguments between partitions.
1247 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1248 holes in the destination.
1250 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1251 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1252 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1253 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1254 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1255 terminates immediately.
1257 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1259 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1261 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1262 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1263 not the empty string.
1265 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1266 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1270 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1271 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1272 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1275 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1282 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1286 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1287 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1289 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1290 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1292 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1293 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1294 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1297 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1301 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1302 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1304 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1305 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1307 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1308 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1309 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1311 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1313 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1316 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1318 ** Configuration option
1320 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1321 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1325 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1326 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1330 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1331 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1332 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1335 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1336 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1337 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1338 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1339 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1340 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1341 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1344 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1348 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1349 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1350 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1352 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1353 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1355 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1357 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1358 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1359 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1360 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1362 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1364 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1365 not just the ones that reference directories
1367 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1368 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1370 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1371 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1372 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1374 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1375 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1376 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1377 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1378 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1379 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1381 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1386 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1387 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1389 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1391 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1393 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1395 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1396 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1398 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1399 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1401 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1403 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1407 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1409 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1411 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1412 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1413 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1414 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1415 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1417 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1418 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1420 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1421 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1423 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1424 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1426 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1427 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1428 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1432 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1433 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1434 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1435 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1436 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1437 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1438 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1439 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1440 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1441 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1442 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1443 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1444 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1445 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1447 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1449 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1450 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1452 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1454 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1456 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1457 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1459 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1461 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1462 without a trailing newline.
1464 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1465 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1467 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1470 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1474 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1476 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1478 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1479 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1480 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1481 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1483 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1485 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1486 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1487 be printed without leading spaces.
1489 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1490 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1495 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1496 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1497 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1499 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1501 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1502 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1504 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1505 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1507 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1508 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1510 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1512 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1514 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1516 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1517 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1519 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1521 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1523 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1524 byte offsets are specified.
1527 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1530 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1533 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1534 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1535 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1536 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1537 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1538 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1539 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1540 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1541 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1542 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1543 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1544 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1545 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1546 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1547 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1548 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1549 directory where M has write access.
1550 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1551 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1552 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1555 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1556 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1557 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1558 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1559 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1560 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1561 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1562 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1563 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1564 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1565 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1566 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1567 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1568 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1569 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1570 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1571 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1572 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1573 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1574 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1575 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1576 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1577 appeared one additional time.
1579 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1580 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1581 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1582 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1585 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1586 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1587 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1588 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1589 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1590 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1591 if there were more than 338.
1593 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1594 - false --help now exits nonzero
1597 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1598 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1599 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1600 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1603 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1604 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1605 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1606 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1607 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1610 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1611 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1612 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1613 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1614 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1615 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1616 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1619 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1620 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1621 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1622 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1623 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1624 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1626 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1627 under certain unusual conditions
1628 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1629 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1632 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1633 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1634 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1635 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1636 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1637 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1638 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1639 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1640 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1641 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1642 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1643 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1644 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1645 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1646 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1647 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1650 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1651 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1654 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1655 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1656 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1657 involving hard-linked directories
1658 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1659 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1660 character-special and block files
1663 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1664 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1665 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1666 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1667 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1668 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1669 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1670 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1671 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1673 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1674 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1675 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1676 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1677 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1678 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1679 specified on the command line.
1680 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1681 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1682 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1683 the first file untouched.
1684 * readlink: new program
1685 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1686 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1687 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1688 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1689 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1690 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1693 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1694 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1695 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1696 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1697 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1698 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1699 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1700 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1701 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1702 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1703 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1704 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1706 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1707 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1708 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1710 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1711 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1712 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1713 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1714 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1715 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1716 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1717 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1720 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1721 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1724 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1725 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1726 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1727 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1728 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1729 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1730 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1733 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1734 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1736 ========================================================================
1737 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1738 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1741 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1743 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1744 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1745 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1746 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1747 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1748 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1749 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1750 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1751 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1752 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1753 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1754 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1756 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1757 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1758 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1759 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1761 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1764 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1766 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1767 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1768 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1769 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1770 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1771 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1772 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1775 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1776 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1777 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1778 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1779 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1780 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1781 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1782 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1783 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1784 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1785 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1786 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1787 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1788 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1789 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1790 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1792 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1793 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1795 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1796 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1797 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1798 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1799 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1800 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1802 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1803 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1804 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1805 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1806 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1807 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1808 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1810 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1811 the source files in the following example:
1812 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1813 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1814 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1815 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1816 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1817 links between source files with --preserve=links
1818 * cp accepts new options:
1819 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1820 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1821 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1822 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1823 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1824 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1825 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1826 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1827 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1829 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1830 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1831 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1832 even though it's older than dest.
1833 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1834 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1835 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1836 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1837 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1839 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1840 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1841 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1842 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1843 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1844 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1845 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1847 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1848 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1849 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1851 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1852 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1853 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1854 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1855 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1856 This is the default.
1858 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1859 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1860 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1861 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1862 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1864 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1867 ========================================================================
1868 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1869 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1872 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1873 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1875 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1876 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1877 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1878 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1879 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1881 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1882 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1883 that specifies a non-directory
1886 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1887 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1888 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1889 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1890 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1891 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1892 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1893 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1894 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1895 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1896 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1897 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1898 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1899 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1900 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1901 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1902 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1903 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1904 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1905 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1906 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1907 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1908 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1909 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1911 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1912 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1913 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1915 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1917 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1918 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1920 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1921 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1922 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1923 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1924 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1926 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1927 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1928 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1929 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1930 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1932 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1934 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1935 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1936 * still more portability fixes
1937 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1938 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1940 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1942 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1944 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1946 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1947 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1948 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1949 there is any time remaining
1950 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1952 ========================================================================
1953 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1954 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1956 This package began as the union of the following:
1957 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1959 ========================================================================
1961 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1964 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1965 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1966 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1967 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1968 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1969 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.