1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
8 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
9 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
11 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
12 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
14 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
15 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
16 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
17 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
18 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
20 fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
21 proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
22 Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
23 Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
24 [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
25 introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
26 as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
27 chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
29 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
30 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
32 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
33 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
35 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
36 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
37 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
39 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
40 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
41 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
42 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
44 ** Changes in behavior
46 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
47 when -v or -c specified.
49 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
50 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
54 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
55 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
56 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
58 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
59 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
60 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
61 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
62 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
63 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
64 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
66 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
67 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
68 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
72 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
75 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
76 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
78 join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
79 unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
81 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
82 For example `shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2` no longer exhausts memory.
84 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
86 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
90 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
91 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
94 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
98 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
99 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
101 ** Changes in behavior
103 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
104 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
105 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
106 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
107 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
108 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
110 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
111 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
112 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
116 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
119 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
123 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
124 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
125 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
127 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
128 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
129 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
131 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
132 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
133 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
135 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
136 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
138 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
139 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
141 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
142 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
144 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
145 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
149 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
150 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
151 processed portion thereof.
153 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
154 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
156 ** Changes in behavior
158 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
159 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
160 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
162 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
163 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
164 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
166 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
167 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
169 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
170 Use --preserve-context instead.
172 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
175 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
179 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
180 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
181 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
182 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
183 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
185 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
186 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
188 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
189 reject file names invalid for that file system.
191 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
192 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
196 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
197 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
198 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
199 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
200 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
201 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
202 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
203 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
205 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
206 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
207 the same number of fields are output for each line.
209 ** Changes in behavior
211 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
212 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
213 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
216 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
220 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
221 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
222 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
225 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
229 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
230 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
232 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
233 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
235 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
236 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
238 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
239 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
240 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
241 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
243 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
244 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
246 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
247 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
248 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
250 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
252 ** Changes in behavior
254 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
255 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
256 to the number of available processors.
260 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
263 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
267 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
268 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
269 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
270 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
272 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
273 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
274 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
276 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
277 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
279 ** Changes in behavior
281 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
282 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
284 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
285 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
286 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
287 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
288 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
289 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
291 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
292 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
293 the same way as the others.
296 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
300 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
301 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
302 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
304 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
305 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
307 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
308 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
309 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
311 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
312 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
314 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
315 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
317 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
318 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
319 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
321 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
322 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
323 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
324 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
328 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
329 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
331 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
334 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
335 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
337 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
339 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
340 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
341 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
343 ** Changes in behavior
345 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
346 rather than its aliased target.
348 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
349 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
350 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
352 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
353 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
354 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
355 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
356 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
357 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
358 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
359 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
361 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
363 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
365 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
366 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
369 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
370 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
371 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
372 control like taskset for example.
374 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
376 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
377 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
378 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
379 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
380 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
381 includes %C when context information is available.
383 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
384 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
385 rather than a file system attribute.
387 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
388 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
389 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
390 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
392 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
393 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
394 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
396 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
397 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
398 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
401 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
405 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
406 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
408 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
410 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
411 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
413 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
414 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
415 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
416 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
418 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
419 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
420 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
424 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
425 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
427 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
428 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
429 duration after the initial signal was sent.
431 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
432 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
433 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
434 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
435 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
436 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
437 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
438 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
439 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
441 ** Changes in behavior
443 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
444 sequence when it would be a no-op.
446 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
447 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
450 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
454 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
455 of available processors, which may not have been the case
456 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
457 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
461 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
462 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
464 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
465 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
466 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
467 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
469 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
470 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
471 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
474 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
478 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
479 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
480 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
482 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
483 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
484 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
486 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
487 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
489 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
490 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
491 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
492 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
494 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
495 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
496 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
498 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
499 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
500 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
501 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
503 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
504 renamed-aside and then recreated.
505 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
507 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
508 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
509 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
510 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
512 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
513 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
514 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
516 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
517 processes will not intersperse their output.
518 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
521 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
525 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
526 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
528 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
529 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
531 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
532 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
533 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
534 the presence of the empty string argument.
535 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
537 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
538 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
539 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
540 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
542 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
543 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
545 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
546 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
547 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
549 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
550 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
551 and with a malicious user on the same system
552 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
553 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
556 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
560 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
561 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
562 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
564 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
565 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
566 offending directory and all "contents."
568 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
569 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
570 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
572 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
573 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
574 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
576 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
577 processes will not intersperse their output.
578 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
579 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
581 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
582 output the name of the file to stdout.
583 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
585 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
586 call fails with errno == EACCES.
587 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
589 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
590 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
593 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
594 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
595 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
597 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
598 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
599 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
600 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
601 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
602 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
604 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
605 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
606 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
607 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
609 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
610 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
612 ** Changes in behavior
614 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
615 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
616 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
617 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
618 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
620 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
621 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
622 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
623 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
625 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
627 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
628 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
629 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
630 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
631 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
635 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
639 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
640 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
642 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
643 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
645 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
646 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
647 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
649 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
650 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
653 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
657 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
658 when the source file doesn't have write access.
659 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
661 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
662 to accommodate leap seconds.
663 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
665 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
666 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
667 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
669 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
671 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
672 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
673 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
675 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
676 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
677 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
678 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
679 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
683 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
684 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
685 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
686 directory or a symlink to a directory.
688 ** Changes in behavior
690 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
691 environment variable is set.
693 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
694 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
695 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
699 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
700 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
701 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
702 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
704 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
705 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
706 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
707 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
711 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
712 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
713 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
715 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
716 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
717 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
718 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
719 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
720 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
723 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
724 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
727 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
731 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
732 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
733 and libraries tested at configure time.
734 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
736 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
737 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
739 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
740 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
742 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
743 printing a summary to stderr.
744 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
746 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
747 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
748 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
750 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
751 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
753 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
754 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
755 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
756 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
758 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
759 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
760 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
761 which is relatively unusual.
762 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
764 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
765 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
766 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
767 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
768 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
769 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
770 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
774 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
775 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
776 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
777 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
778 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
782 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
783 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
785 ** Changes in behavior
787 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
788 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
789 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
790 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
791 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
794 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
798 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
799 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
801 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
802 before data copying has started.
804 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
805 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
807 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
808 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
809 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
810 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
812 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
813 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
814 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
815 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
817 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
822 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
823 for its standard streams.
825 ** Changes in behavior
827 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
828 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
829 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
830 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
831 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
832 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
834 ** Deprecated options
836 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
837 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
841 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
843 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
844 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
847 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
849 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
850 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
852 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
853 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
856 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
860 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
861 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
862 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
863 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
865 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
866 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
867 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
868 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
869 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
874 make check: two tests have been corrected
878 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
879 inherited from gnulib.
882 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
886 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
887 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
888 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
889 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
891 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
892 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
894 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
896 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
897 systems without xattr support.
899 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
900 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
901 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
903 ** Changes in behavior
905 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
906 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
907 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
908 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
910 ** Improved robustness
912 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
913 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
914 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
915 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
916 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
917 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
918 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
919 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
920 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
924 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
925 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
927 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
928 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
929 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
930 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
931 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
934 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
938 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
939 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
940 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
944 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
945 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
946 data was read, or on process exit.
947 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
949 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
950 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
951 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
952 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
954 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
955 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
956 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
957 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
959 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
960 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
962 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
963 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
965 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
966 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
967 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
969 ** Changes in behavior
971 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
972 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
973 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
975 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
976 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
978 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
979 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
980 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
983 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
987 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
989 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
990 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
991 install: Never copies xattrs
993 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
994 from overwriting any existing destination file
996 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
997 mode where this feature is available.
999 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
1000 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
1001 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
1002 do not modify the destination at all.
1004 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
1006 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
1010 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
1011 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1013 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1015 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1016 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1018 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1019 processing the first file name
1021 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1022 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1023 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1024 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1026 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1027 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1029 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1030 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1033 ** Changes in behavior
1035 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1036 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1038 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1039 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1040 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1042 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1043 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1045 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1047 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1048 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1049 is still marked with a '+'.
1052 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1056 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1057 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1061 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1062 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1063 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1064 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1065 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1066 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1068 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1069 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1071 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1072 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1074 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1076 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1077 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1078 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1080 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1081 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1083 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1084 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1085 used to factor large numbers.
1087 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1090 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1092 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1094 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1095 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1097 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1098 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1099 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1100 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1102 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1103 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1104 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1106 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1107 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1111 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1113 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1114 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1116 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1117 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1119 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1121 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1122 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1126 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1127 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1128 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1130 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1132 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1133 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1134 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1136 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1137 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1138 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1140 ** Changes in behavior
1142 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1143 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1146 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1150 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1151 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1152 'futimens' system calls.
1156 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1158 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1159 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1160 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1162 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1163 with no USERNAME argument.
1165 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1166 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1167 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1169 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1170 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1171 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1172 number of fields for some inputs.
1174 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1175 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1177 ** Changes in behavior
1179 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1180 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1183 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1187 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1189 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1190 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1191 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1192 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1194 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1195 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1197 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1198 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1200 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1201 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1203 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1204 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1205 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1206 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1208 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1209 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1210 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1211 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1212 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1213 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1215 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1216 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1218 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1219 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1220 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1222 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1223 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1225 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1226 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1228 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1229 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1230 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1231 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1233 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1234 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1236 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1237 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1239 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1240 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1241 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1245 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1246 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1248 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1249 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1250 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1251 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1255 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1256 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1258 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1260 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1264 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1265 which have negative errno values.
1269 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1273 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1277 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1278 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1281 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1285 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1286 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1287 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1289 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1290 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1291 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1292 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1296 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1297 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1298 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1299 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1302 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1306 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1308 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1309 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1310 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1313 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1317 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1318 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1320 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1322 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1324 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1326 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1330 ** Changes in behavior
1332 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1333 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1335 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1336 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1338 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1339 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1340 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1344 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1345 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1346 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1347 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1348 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1349 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1350 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1351 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1352 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1353 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1354 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1356 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1357 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1358 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1361 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1364 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1365 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1366 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1368 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1369 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1370 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1373 ** New build options
1375 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1376 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1377 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1378 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1380 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1381 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1382 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1383 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1384 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1385 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1386 of "make check" fail.
1388 ** Remove deprecated options
1390 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1391 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1392 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1393 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1394 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1396 ** Improved robustness
1398 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1399 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1400 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1401 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1402 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1403 loss of the contents of a/f.
1405 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1406 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1410 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1411 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1412 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1414 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1415 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1416 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1417 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1419 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1420 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1421 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1422 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1423 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1424 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1425 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1426 destination is a symlink.
1428 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1430 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1431 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1433 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1434 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1436 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1438 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1439 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1441 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1442 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1444 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1447 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1448 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1450 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1451 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1453 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1454 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1455 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1456 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1458 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1459 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1460 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1462 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1463 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1464 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1466 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1467 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1468 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1469 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1471 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1472 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1473 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1475 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1476 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1478 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1479 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1481 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1483 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1484 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1485 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1487 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1488 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1490 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1491 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1493 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1494 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1496 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1497 [present in the original version]
1500 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1504 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1506 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1507 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1508 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1510 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1511 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1513 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1517 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1518 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1520 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1521 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1523 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1524 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1526 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1527 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1528 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1529 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1530 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1531 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1533 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1534 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1537 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1538 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1540 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1543 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1544 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1545 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1547 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1548 directory is unreadable.
1550 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1551 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1552 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1554 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1555 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1556 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1557 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1558 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1561 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1562 Before it would print nothing.
1564 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1566 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1567 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1568 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1569 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1570 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1571 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1572 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1573 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1575 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1579 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1580 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1581 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1583 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1584 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1585 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1586 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1589 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1593 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1594 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1595 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1596 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1597 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1598 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1599 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1601 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1602 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1603 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1604 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1605 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1606 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1607 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1608 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1610 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1611 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1612 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1615 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1619 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1620 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1622 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1623 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1624 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1626 ** Improved robustness
1628 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1629 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1630 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1633 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1637 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1638 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1639 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1640 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1641 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1643 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1647 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1650 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1654 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1655 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1656 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1657 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1659 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1660 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1662 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1663 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1664 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1667 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1669 ** Improved robustness
1671 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1672 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1674 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1675 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1676 or NFS-mounted partition.
1678 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1679 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1683 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1684 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1685 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1686 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1687 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1688 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1690 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1691 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1693 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1694 or neglect to report file removal.
1696 For the "groups" command:
1698 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1699 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1701 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1703 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1705 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1709 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1710 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1713 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1715 ** Changes in behavior
1717 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1718 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1719 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1720 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1722 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1723 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1724 a final `./' or `../' component.
1726 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1727 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1728 this only for pipes.
1730 ** Infrastructure changes
1732 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1733 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1734 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1735 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1739 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1740 name is "." or "..".
1742 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1743 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1744 dirent.d_type support.
1746 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1747 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1749 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1750 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1751 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1752 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1755 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1757 ** Changes in behavior
1759 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1763 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1764 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1768 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1769 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1770 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1772 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1773 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1775 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1776 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1778 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1780 ** Improved robustness
1782 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1783 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1784 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1786 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1787 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1790 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1791 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1793 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1794 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1796 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1797 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1799 ** Changes in behavior
1801 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1802 where the two are distinct.
1804 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1805 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1806 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1807 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1808 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1809 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1810 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1811 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1812 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1813 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1814 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1815 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1816 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1817 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1818 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1819 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1820 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1822 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1823 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1824 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1826 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1827 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1828 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1829 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1832 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1833 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1837 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1838 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1839 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1840 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1842 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1843 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1844 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1846 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1847 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1848 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1849 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1850 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1853 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1854 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1856 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1857 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1858 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1859 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1861 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1862 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1863 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1865 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1866 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1867 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1868 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1870 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1871 and sticky) with the -m option.
1873 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1874 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1875 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1876 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1877 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1879 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1880 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1882 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1886 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1887 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1888 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1889 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1891 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1893 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1895 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1896 silently ignoring one of them.
1898 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1899 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1900 containing this change was 5.92.
1902 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1903 automatically newline terminated.
1905 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1906 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1907 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1908 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1911 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1912 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1913 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1916 ** Scheduled for removal
1918 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1919 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1921 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1922 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1923 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1924 command to unlink a directory.
1926 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1927 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1928 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1929 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1933 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1934 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1935 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1936 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1937 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1938 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1942 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1943 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1945 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1947 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1948 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1949 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1951 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1952 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1955 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1956 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1958 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1959 list directories before files.
1961 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1962 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1963 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1964 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1967 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1969 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1971 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1972 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1973 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1975 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1976 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1980 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1981 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1982 usually printing nothing.
1984 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1986 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1987 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1988 them with hard-linked directories.
1990 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1991 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1992 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1994 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1995 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1996 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1998 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
2001 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
2002 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
2004 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
2005 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
2007 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
2008 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
2010 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
2011 all command-line arguments.
2013 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2015 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2017 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2018 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2020 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2022 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2023 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2024 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2025 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2026 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2028 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2029 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2031 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2032 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2033 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2034 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2036 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2038 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2042 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2043 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2045 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2046 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2048 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
2049 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2051 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2052 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
2054 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2055 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2057 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2059 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2060 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2061 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2064 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2066 ** Build-related bug fixes
2068 installing .mo files would fail
2071 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2075 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2077 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2080 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2084 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2085 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2089 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2091 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2092 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2094 ** Deprecated options
2096 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2097 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
2099 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2103 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2105 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
2106 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2107 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2108 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2110 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2113 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2119 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2124 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2126 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2128 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2129 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
2130 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
2132 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2133 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2134 problematic usages. These include:
2136 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2137 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2138 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2139 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2140 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2141 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2142 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2143 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2144 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2146 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2147 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2149 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2150 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2151 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2152 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2154 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2155 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2156 between binary and text files.
2158 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2162 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2166 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2167 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2169 head tac tail tee tr
2170 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2172 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2173 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2175 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2176 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2177 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2179 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2181 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2183 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2184 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2185 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2189 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2191 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2192 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2194 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2195 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2196 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2200 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2201 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2205 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2206 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2207 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2211 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2212 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2216 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2218 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2220 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2224 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2225 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2226 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2228 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2229 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2230 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2231 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2232 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2234 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2238 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2239 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2240 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2242 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2244 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2245 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2246 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2247 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2249 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2251 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2252 rather than silently wrapping around.
2254 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2255 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2257 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2258 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2260 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2261 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2262 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2263 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2265 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2267 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2269 ** Improved robustness
2271 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2272 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2273 no matter how large the result.
2275 ** Improved portability
2277 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2278 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2280 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2282 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2283 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2284 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2286 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2287 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2291 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2292 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2294 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2296 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2297 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2298 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2299 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2301 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2302 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2304 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2305 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2306 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2308 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2310 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2311 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2313 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2314 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2316 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2318 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2319 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2321 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2322 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2324 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2325 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2326 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2328 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2330 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2332 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2336 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2338 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2339 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2340 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2342 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2343 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2345 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2346 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2347 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2349 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2350 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2352 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2353 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2354 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2355 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2357 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2358 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2360 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2361 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2362 the file system does not support it.
2364 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2366 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2367 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2369 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2371 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2372 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2374 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2375 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2376 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2377 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2379 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2380 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2383 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2384 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2385 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2386 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2388 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2389 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2390 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2391 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2393 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2394 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2396 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2398 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2399 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2400 reporting incorrect results.
2404 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2405 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2407 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2410 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2412 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2413 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2415 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2416 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2418 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2421 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2422 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2423 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2424 the file name does not look like a page range.
2426 printf has several changes:
2428 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2429 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2431 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2432 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2433 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2435 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2436 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2439 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2440 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2442 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2443 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2445 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2447 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2448 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2450 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2452 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2454 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2455 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2456 when first encountering the directory.
2460 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2461 output; POSIX requires this.
2463 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2464 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2466 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2468 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2469 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2471 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2472 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2474 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2475 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2476 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2477 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2478 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2479 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2480 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2482 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2483 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2484 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2486 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2487 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2489 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2491 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2493 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2494 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2495 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2496 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2498 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2502 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2503 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2504 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2505 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2506 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2508 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2509 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2510 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2512 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2513 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2515 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2516 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2518 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2519 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2520 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2521 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2522 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2524 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2525 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2527 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2528 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2530 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2532 nocreat do not create the output file
2533 excl fail if the output file already exists
2534 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2535 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2537 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2539 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2540 direct use direct I/O for data
2541 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2542 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2543 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2544 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2545 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2547 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2549 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2550 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2553 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2554 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2555 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2556 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2557 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2558 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2560 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2561 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2563 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2566 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2568 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2570 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2571 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2573 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2574 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2575 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2577 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2578 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2579 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2581 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2583 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2584 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2586 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2587 for compatibility with bash.
2589 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2591 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2592 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2593 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2594 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2596 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2597 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2599 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2600 ls supports TABSIZE.
2601 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2602 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2603 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2605 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2608 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2610 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2611 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2612 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2613 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2614 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2615 an offset, not as a file name.
2617 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2618 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2620 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2621 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2623 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2624 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2626 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2627 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2628 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2630 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2631 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2633 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2634 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2638 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2640 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2642 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2646 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2647 or more arguments between partitions.
2649 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2650 holes in the destination.
2652 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2653 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2654 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2655 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2656 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2657 terminates immediately.
2659 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2661 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2663 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2664 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2665 not the empty string.
2667 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2668 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2672 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2673 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2674 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2677 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2684 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2688 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2689 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2691 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2692 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2694 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2695 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2696 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2699 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2703 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2704 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2706 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2707 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2709 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2710 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2711 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2713 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2715 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2718 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2720 ** Configuration option
2722 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2723 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2727 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2728 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2732 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2733 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2734 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2737 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2738 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2739 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2740 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2741 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2742 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2743 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2746 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2750 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2751 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2752 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2754 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2755 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2757 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2759 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2760 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2761 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2762 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2764 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2766 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2767 not just the ones that reference directories
2769 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2770 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2772 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2773 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2774 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2776 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2777 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2778 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2779 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2780 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2781 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2783 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2788 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2789 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2791 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2793 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2795 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2797 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2798 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2800 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2801 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2803 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2805 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2809 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2811 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2813 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2814 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2815 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2816 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2817 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2819 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2820 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2822 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2823 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2825 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2826 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2828 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2829 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2830 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2834 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2835 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2836 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2837 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2838 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2839 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2840 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2841 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2842 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2843 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2844 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2845 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2846 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2847 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2849 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2851 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2852 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2854 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2856 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2858 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2859 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2861 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2863 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2864 without a trailing newline.
2866 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2867 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2869 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2872 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2876 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2878 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2880 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2881 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2882 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2883 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2885 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2887 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2888 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2889 be printed without leading spaces.
2891 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2892 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2897 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2898 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2899 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2901 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2903 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2904 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2906 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2907 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2909 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2910 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2912 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2914 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2916 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2918 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2919 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2921 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2923 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2925 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2926 byte offsets are specified.
2929 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2932 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2935 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2936 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2937 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2938 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2939 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2940 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2941 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2942 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2943 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2944 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2945 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2946 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2947 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2948 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2949 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2950 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2951 directory where M has write access.
2952 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2953 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2954 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2957 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2958 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2959 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2960 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2961 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2962 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2963 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2964 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2965 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2966 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2967 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2968 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2969 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2970 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2971 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2972 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2973 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2974 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2975 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2976 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2977 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2978 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2979 appeared one additional time.
2981 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2982 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2983 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2984 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2987 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2988 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2989 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2990 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2991 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2992 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2993 if there were more than 338.
2995 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2996 - false --help now exits nonzero
2999 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
3000 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
3001 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
3002 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
3005 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
3006 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
3007 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
3008 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
3009 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3012 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3013 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3014 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3015 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
3016 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3017 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3018 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3021 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3022 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3023 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3024 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3025 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3026 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3028 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3029 under certain unusual conditions
3030 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3031 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3034 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3035 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3036 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3037 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3038 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3039 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
3040 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3041 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3042 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
3043 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
3044 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3045 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3046 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3047 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3048 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3049 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3052 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3053 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3056 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3057 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3058 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3059 involving hard-linked directories
3060 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3061 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
3062 character-special and block files
3065 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3066 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3067 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3068 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3069 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3070 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3071 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3072 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3073 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3075 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
3076 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
3077 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3078 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3079 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3080 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3081 specified on the command line.
3082 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3083 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
3084 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3085 the first file untouched.
3086 * readlink: new program
3087 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3088 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3089 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3090 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3091 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3092 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3095 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3096 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3097 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3098 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3099 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3100 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3101 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
3102 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
3103 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3104 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3105 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3106 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3108 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3109 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3110 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3112 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3113 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3114 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3115 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3116 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3117 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3118 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3119 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
3122 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3123 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3126 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3127 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3128 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3129 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3130 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
3131 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3132 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3135 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3136 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3138 ========================================================================
3139 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3140 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3143 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3145 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3146 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3147 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3148 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3149 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3150 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3151 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3152 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
3153 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3154 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3155 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3156 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3158 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3159 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3160 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3161 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3163 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3166 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3168 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3169 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3170 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3171 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3172 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3173 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3174 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3177 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3178 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3179 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3180 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3181 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3182 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3183 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3184 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3185 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3186 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3187 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3188 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3189 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3190 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3191 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3192 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3194 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3195 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3197 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3198 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3199 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3200 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3201 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3202 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3204 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3205 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3206 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3207 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3208 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3209 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3210 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3212 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3213 the source files in the following example:
3214 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3215 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3216 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3217 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3218 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3219 links between source files with --preserve=links
3220 * cp accepts new options:
3221 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3222 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3223 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3224 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3225 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3226 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3227 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3228 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3229 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3231 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3232 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3233 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3234 even though it's older than dest.
3235 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3236 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3237 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3238 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3239 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3241 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3242 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3243 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3244 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3245 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3246 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3247 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3249 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3250 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3251 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3253 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3254 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3255 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3256 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3257 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3258 This is the default.
3260 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3261 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3262 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3263 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3264 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3266 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3269 ========================================================================
3270 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3271 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3274 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3275 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3277 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3278 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3279 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3280 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3281 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3283 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3284 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3285 that specifies a non-directory
3288 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3289 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3290 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3291 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3292 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3293 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3294 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3295 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3296 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3297 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3298 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3299 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3300 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3301 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3302 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3303 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3304 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3305 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3306 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3307 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3308 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3309 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3310 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3311 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3313 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3314 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3315 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3317 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3319 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3320 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3322 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3323 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3324 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3325 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3326 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3328 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3329 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3330 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3331 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3332 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3334 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3336 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3337 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3338 * still more portability fixes
3339 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3340 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3342 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3344 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3346 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3348 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3349 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3350 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3351 there is any time remaining
3352 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3354 ========================================================================
3355 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3356 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3358 This package began as the union of the following:
3359 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3361 ========================================================================
3363 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3365 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3366 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3367 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3368 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3369 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3370 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.