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 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
12 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
14 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
15 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
17 ** Changes in behavior
19 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
20 when -v or -c specified.
24 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
25 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
26 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
27 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
28 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
29 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
30 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
32 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
33 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
34 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
36 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
37 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
38 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
42 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
43 For example `shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2` no longer exhausts memory.
45 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
48 stat -f now also recognizes the GPFS file system type.
52 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
53 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
56 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
60 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
61 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
63 ** Changes in behavior
65 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
66 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
67 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
68 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
69 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
70 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
72 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
73 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
74 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
78 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
81 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
85 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
86 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
87 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
89 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
90 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
91 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
93 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
94 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
95 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
97 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
98 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
100 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
101 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
103 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
104 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
106 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
107 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
111 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
112 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
113 processed portion thereof.
115 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
116 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
118 ** Changes in behavior
120 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
121 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
122 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
124 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
125 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
126 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
128 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
129 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
131 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
132 Use --preserve-context instead.
134 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
137 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
141 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
142 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
143 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
144 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
145 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
147 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
148 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
150 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
151 reject file names invalid for that file system.
153 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
154 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
158 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
159 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
160 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
161 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
162 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
163 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
164 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
165 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
167 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
168 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
169 the same number of fields are output for each line.
171 ** Changes in behavior
173 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
174 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
175 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
178 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
182 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
183 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
184 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
187 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
191 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
192 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
194 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
195 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
197 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
198 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
200 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
201 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
202 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
203 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
205 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
206 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
208 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
209 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
210 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
212 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
214 ** Changes in behavior
216 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
217 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
218 to the number of available processors.
222 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
225 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
229 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
230 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
231 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
232 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
234 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
235 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
236 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
238 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
239 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
241 ** Changes in behavior
243 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
244 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
246 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
247 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
248 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
249 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
250 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
251 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
253 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
254 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
255 the same way as the others.
258 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
262 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
263 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
264 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
266 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
267 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
269 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
270 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
271 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
273 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
274 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
276 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
277 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
279 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
280 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
281 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
283 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
284 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
285 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
286 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
290 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
291 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
293 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
296 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
297 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
299 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
301 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
302 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
303 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
305 ** Changes in behavior
307 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
308 rather than its aliased target.
310 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
311 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
312 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
314 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
315 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
316 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
317 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
318 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
319 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
320 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
321 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
323 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
325 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
327 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
328 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
331 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
332 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
333 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
334 control like taskset for example.
336 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
338 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
339 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
340 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
341 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
342 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
343 includes %C when context information is available.
345 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
346 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
347 rather than a file system attribute.
349 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
350 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
351 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
352 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
354 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
355 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
356 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
358 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
359 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
360 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
363 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
367 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
368 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
370 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
372 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
373 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
375 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
376 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
377 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
378 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
380 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
381 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
382 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
386 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
387 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
389 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
390 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
391 duration after the initial signal was sent.
393 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
394 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
395 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
396 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
397 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
398 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
399 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
400 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
401 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
403 ** Changes in behavior
405 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
406 sequence when it would be a no-op.
408 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
409 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
412 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
416 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
417 of available processors, which may not have been the case
418 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
419 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
423 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
424 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
426 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
427 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
428 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
429 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
431 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
432 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
433 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
436 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
440 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
441 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
442 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
444 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
445 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
446 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
448 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
449 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
451 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
452 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
453 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
454 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
456 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
457 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
458 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
460 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
461 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
462 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
463 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
465 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
466 renamed-aside and then recreated.
467 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
469 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
470 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
471 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
472 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
474 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
475 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
476 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
478 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
479 processes will not intersperse their output.
480 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
483 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
487 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
488 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
490 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
491 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
493 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
494 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
495 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
496 the presence of the empty string argument.
497 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
499 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
500 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
501 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
502 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
504 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
505 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
507 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
508 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
509 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
511 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
512 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
513 and with a malicious user on the same system
514 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
515 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
518 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
522 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
523 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
524 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
526 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
527 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
528 offending directory and all "contents."
530 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
531 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
532 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
534 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
535 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
536 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
538 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
539 processes will not intersperse their output.
540 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
541 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
543 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
544 output the name of the file to stdout.
545 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
547 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
548 call fails with errno == EACCES.
549 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
551 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
552 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
555 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
556 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
557 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
559 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
560 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
561 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
562 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
563 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
564 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
566 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
567 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
568 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
569 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
571 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
572 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
574 ** Changes in behavior
576 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
577 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
578 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
579 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
580 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
582 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
583 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
584 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
585 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
587 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
589 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
590 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
591 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
592 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
593 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
597 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
601 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
602 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
604 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
605 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
607 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
608 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
609 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
611 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
612 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
615 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
619 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
620 when the source file doesn't have write access.
621 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
623 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
624 to accommodate leap seconds.
625 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
627 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
628 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
629 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
631 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
633 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
634 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
635 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
637 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
638 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
639 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
640 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
641 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
645 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
646 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
647 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
648 directory or a symlink to a directory.
650 ** Changes in behavior
652 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
653 environment variable is set.
655 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
656 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
657 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
661 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
662 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
663 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
664 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
666 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
667 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
668 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
669 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
673 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
674 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
675 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
677 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
678 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
679 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
680 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
681 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
682 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
685 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
686 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
689 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
693 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
694 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
695 and libraries tested at configure time.
696 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
698 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
699 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
701 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
702 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
704 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
705 printing a summary to stderr.
706 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
708 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
709 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
710 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
712 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
713 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
715 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
716 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
717 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
718 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
720 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
721 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
722 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
723 which is relatively unusual.
724 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
726 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
727 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
728 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
729 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
730 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
731 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
732 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
736 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
737 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
738 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
739 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
740 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
744 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
745 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
747 ** Changes in behavior
749 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
750 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
751 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
752 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
753 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
756 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
760 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
761 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
763 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
764 before data copying has started.
766 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
767 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
769 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
770 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
771 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
772 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
774 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
775 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
776 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
777 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
779 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
784 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
785 for its standard streams.
787 ** Changes in behavior
789 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
790 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
791 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
792 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
793 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
794 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
796 ** Deprecated options
798 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
799 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
803 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
805 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
806 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
809 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
811 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
812 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
814 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
815 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
818 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
822 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
823 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
824 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
825 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
827 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
828 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
829 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
830 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
831 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
836 make check: two tests have been corrected
840 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
841 inherited from gnulib.
844 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
848 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
849 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
850 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
851 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
853 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
854 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
856 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
858 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
859 systems without xattr support.
861 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
862 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
863 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
865 ** Changes in behavior
867 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
868 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
869 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
870 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
872 ** Improved robustness
874 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
875 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
876 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
877 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
878 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
879 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
880 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
881 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
882 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
886 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
887 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
889 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
890 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
891 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
892 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
893 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
896 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
900 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
901 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
902 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
906 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
907 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
908 data was read, or on process exit.
909 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
911 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
912 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
913 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
914 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
916 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
917 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
918 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
919 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
921 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
922 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
924 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
925 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
927 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
928 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
929 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
931 ** Changes in behavior
933 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
934 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
935 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
937 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
938 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
940 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
941 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
942 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
945 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
949 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
951 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
952 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
953 install: Never copies xattrs
955 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
956 from overwriting any existing destination file
958 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
959 mode where this feature is available.
961 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
962 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
963 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
964 do not modify the destination at all.
966 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
968 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
972 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
973 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
975 cp uses much less memory in some situations
977 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
978 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
980 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
981 processing the first file name
983 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
984 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
985 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
986 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
988 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
989 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
991 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
992 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
995 ** Changes in behavior
997 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
998 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1000 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1001 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1002 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1004 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1005 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1007 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1009 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1010 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1011 is still marked with a '+'.
1014 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1018 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1019 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1023 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1024 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1025 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1026 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1027 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1028 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1030 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1031 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1033 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1034 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1036 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1038 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1039 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1040 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1042 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1043 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1045 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1046 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1047 used to factor large numbers.
1049 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1052 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1054 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1056 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1057 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1059 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1060 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1061 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1062 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1064 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1065 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1066 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1068 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1069 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1073 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1075 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1076 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1078 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1079 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1081 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1083 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1084 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1088 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1089 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1090 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1092 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1094 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1095 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1096 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1098 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1099 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1100 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1102 ** Changes in behavior
1104 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1105 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1108 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1112 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1114 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1115 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1116 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1118 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1119 with no USERNAME argument.
1121 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1122 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1123 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1125 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1126 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1127 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1128 number of fields for some inputs.
1130 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1131 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1133 ** Changes in behavior
1135 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1136 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1139 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1143 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1145 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1146 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1147 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1148 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1150 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1151 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1153 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1154 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1156 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1157 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1159 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1160 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1161 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1162 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1164 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1165 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1166 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1167 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1168 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1169 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1171 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1172 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1174 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1175 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1176 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1178 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1179 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1181 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1182 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1184 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1185 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1186 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1187 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1189 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1190 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1192 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1193 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1195 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1196 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1197 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1201 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1202 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1204 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1205 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1206 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1207 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1211 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1212 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1214 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1216 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1220 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1221 which have negative errno values.
1225 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1229 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1233 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1234 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1237 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1241 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1242 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1243 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1245 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1246 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1247 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1248 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1252 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1253 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1254 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1255 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1258 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1262 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1264 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1265 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1266 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1269 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1273 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1274 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1276 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1278 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1280 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1282 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1286 ** Changes in behavior
1288 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1289 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1291 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1292 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1294 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1295 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1296 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1300 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1301 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1302 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1303 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1304 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1305 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1306 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1307 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1308 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1309 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1310 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1312 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1313 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1314 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1317 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1320 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1321 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1322 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1324 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1325 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1326 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1329 ** New build options
1331 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1332 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1333 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1334 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1336 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1337 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1338 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1339 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1340 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1341 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1342 of "make check" fail.
1344 ** Remove deprecated options
1346 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1347 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1348 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1349 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1350 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1352 ** Improved robustness
1354 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1355 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1356 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1357 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1358 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1359 loss of the contents of a/f.
1361 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1362 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1366 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1367 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1368 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1370 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1371 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1372 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1373 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1375 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1376 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1377 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1378 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1379 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1380 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1381 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1382 destination is a symlink.
1384 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1386 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1387 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1389 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1390 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1392 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1394 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1395 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1397 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1398 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1400 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1403 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1404 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1406 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1407 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1409 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1410 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1411 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1412 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1414 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1415 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1416 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1418 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1419 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1420 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1422 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1423 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1424 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1425 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1427 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1428 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1429 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1431 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1432 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1434 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1435 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1437 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1439 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1440 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1441 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1443 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1444 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1446 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1447 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1449 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1450 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1452 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1453 [present in the original version]
1456 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1460 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1462 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1463 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1464 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1466 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1467 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1469 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1473 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1474 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1476 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1477 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1479 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1480 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1482 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1483 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1484 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1485 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1486 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1487 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1489 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1490 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1493 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1494 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1496 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1499 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1500 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1501 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1503 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1504 directory is unreadable.
1506 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1507 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1508 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1510 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1511 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1512 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1513 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1514 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1517 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1518 Before it would print nothing.
1520 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1522 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1523 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1524 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1525 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1526 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1527 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1528 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1529 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1531 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1535 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1536 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1537 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1539 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1540 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1541 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1542 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1545 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1549 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1550 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1551 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1552 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1553 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1554 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1555 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1557 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1558 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1559 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1560 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1561 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1562 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1563 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1564 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1566 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1567 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1568 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1571 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1575 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1576 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1578 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1579 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1580 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1582 ** Improved robustness
1584 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1585 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1586 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1589 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1593 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1594 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1595 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1596 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1597 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1599 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1603 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1606 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1610 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1611 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1612 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1613 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1615 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1616 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1618 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1619 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1620 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1623 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1625 ** Improved robustness
1627 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1628 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1630 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1631 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1632 or NFS-mounted partition.
1634 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1635 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1639 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1640 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1641 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1642 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1643 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1644 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1646 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1647 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1649 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1650 or neglect to report file removal.
1652 For the "groups" command:
1654 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1655 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1657 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1659 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1661 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1665 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1666 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1669 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1671 ** Changes in behavior
1673 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1674 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1675 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1676 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1678 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1679 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1680 a final `./' or `../' component.
1682 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1683 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1684 this only for pipes.
1686 ** Infrastructure changes
1688 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1689 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1690 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1691 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1695 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1696 name is "." or "..".
1698 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1699 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1700 dirent.d_type support.
1702 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1703 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1705 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1706 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1707 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1708 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1711 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1713 ** Changes in behavior
1715 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1719 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1720 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1724 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1725 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1726 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1728 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1729 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1731 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1732 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1734 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1736 ** Improved robustness
1738 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1739 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1740 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1742 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1743 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1746 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1747 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1749 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1750 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1752 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1753 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1755 ** Changes in behavior
1757 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1758 where the two are distinct.
1760 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1761 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1762 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1763 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1764 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1765 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1766 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1767 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1768 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1769 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1770 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1771 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1772 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1773 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1774 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1775 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1776 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1778 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1779 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1780 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1782 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1783 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1784 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1785 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1788 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1789 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1793 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1794 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1795 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1796 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1798 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1799 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1800 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1802 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1803 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1804 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1805 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1806 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1809 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1810 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1812 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1813 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1814 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1815 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1817 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1818 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1819 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1821 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1822 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1823 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1824 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1826 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1827 and sticky) with the -m option.
1829 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1830 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1831 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1832 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1833 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1835 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1836 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1838 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1842 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1843 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1844 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1845 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1847 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1849 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1851 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1852 silently ignoring one of them.
1854 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1855 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1856 containing this change was 5.92.
1858 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1859 automatically newline terminated.
1861 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1862 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1863 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1864 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1867 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1868 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1869 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1872 ** Scheduled for removal
1874 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1875 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1877 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1878 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1879 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1880 command to unlink a directory.
1882 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1883 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1884 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1885 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1889 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1890 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1891 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1892 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1893 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1894 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1898 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1899 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1901 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1903 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1904 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1905 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1907 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1908 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1911 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1912 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1914 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1915 list directories before files.
1917 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1918 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1919 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1920 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1923 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1925 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1927 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1928 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1929 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1931 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1932 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1936 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1937 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1938 usually printing nothing.
1940 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1942 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1943 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1944 them with hard-linked directories.
1946 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1947 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1948 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1950 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1951 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1952 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1954 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1957 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1958 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1960 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1961 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1963 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1964 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1966 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1967 all command-line arguments.
1969 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1971 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1973 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1974 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1976 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1978 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1979 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1980 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1981 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1982 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1984 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1985 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1987 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1988 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1989 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1990 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1992 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1994 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1998 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1999 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2001 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2002 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2004 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
2005 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2007 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2008 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
2010 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2011 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2013 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2015 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2016 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2017 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2020 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2022 ** Build-related bug fixes
2024 installing .mo files would fail
2027 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2031 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2033 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2036 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2040 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2041 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2045 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2047 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2048 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2050 ** Deprecated options
2052 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2053 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
2055 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2059 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2061 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
2062 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2063 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2064 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2066 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2069 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2075 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2080 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2082 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2084 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2085 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
2086 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
2088 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2089 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2090 problematic usages. These include:
2092 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2093 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2094 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2095 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2096 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2097 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2098 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2099 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2100 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2102 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2103 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2105 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2106 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2107 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2108 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2110 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2111 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2112 between binary and text files.
2114 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2118 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2122 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2123 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2125 head tac tail tee tr
2126 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2128 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2129 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2131 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2132 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2133 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2135 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2137 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2139 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2140 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2141 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2145 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2147 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2148 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2150 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2151 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2152 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2156 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2157 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2161 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2162 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2163 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2167 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2168 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2172 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2174 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2176 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2180 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2181 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2182 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2184 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2185 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2186 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2187 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2188 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2190 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2194 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2195 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2196 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2198 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2200 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2201 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2202 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2203 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2205 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2207 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2208 rather than silently wrapping around.
2210 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2211 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2213 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2214 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2216 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2217 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2218 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2219 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2221 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2223 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2225 ** Improved robustness
2227 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2228 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2229 no matter how large the result.
2231 ** Improved portability
2233 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2234 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2236 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2238 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2239 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2240 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2242 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2243 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2247 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2248 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2250 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2252 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2253 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2254 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2255 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2257 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2258 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2260 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2261 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2262 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2264 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2266 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2267 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2269 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2270 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2272 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2274 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2275 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2277 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2278 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2280 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2281 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2282 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2284 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2286 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2288 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2292 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2294 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2295 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2296 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2298 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2299 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2301 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2302 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2303 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2305 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2306 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2308 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2309 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2310 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2311 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2313 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2314 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2316 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2317 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2318 the file system does not support it.
2320 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2322 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2323 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2325 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2327 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2328 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2330 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2331 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2332 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2333 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2335 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2336 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2339 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2340 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2341 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2342 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2344 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2345 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2346 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2347 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2349 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2350 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2352 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2354 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2355 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2356 reporting incorrect results.
2360 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2361 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2363 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2366 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2368 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2369 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2371 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2372 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2374 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2377 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2378 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2379 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2380 the file name does not look like a page range.
2382 printf has several changes:
2384 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2385 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2387 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2388 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2389 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2391 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2392 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2395 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2396 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2398 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2399 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2401 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2403 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2404 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2406 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2408 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2410 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2411 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2412 when first encountering the directory.
2416 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2417 output; POSIX requires this.
2419 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2420 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2422 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2424 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2425 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2427 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2428 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2430 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2431 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2432 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2433 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2434 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2435 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2436 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2438 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2439 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2440 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2442 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2443 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2445 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2447 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2449 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2450 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2451 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2452 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2454 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2458 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2459 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2460 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2461 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2462 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2464 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2465 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2466 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2468 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2469 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2471 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2472 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2474 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2475 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2476 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2477 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2478 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2480 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2481 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2483 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2484 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2486 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2488 nocreat do not create the output file
2489 excl fail if the output file already exists
2490 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2491 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2493 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2495 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2496 direct use direct I/O for data
2497 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2498 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2499 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2500 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2501 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2503 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2505 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2506 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2509 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2510 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2511 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2512 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2513 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2514 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2516 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2517 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2519 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2522 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2524 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2526 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2527 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2529 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2530 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2531 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2533 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2534 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2535 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2537 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2539 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2540 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2542 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2543 for compatibility with bash.
2545 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2547 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2548 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2549 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2550 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2552 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2553 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2555 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2556 ls supports TABSIZE.
2557 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2558 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2559 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2561 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2564 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2566 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2567 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2568 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2569 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2570 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2571 an offset, not as a file name.
2573 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2574 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2576 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2577 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2579 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2580 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2582 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2583 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2584 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2586 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2587 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2589 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2590 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2594 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2596 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2598 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2602 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2603 or more arguments between partitions.
2605 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2606 holes in the destination.
2608 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2609 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2610 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2611 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2612 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2613 terminates immediately.
2615 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2617 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2619 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2620 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2621 not the empty string.
2623 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2624 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2628 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2629 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2630 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2633 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2640 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2644 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2645 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2647 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2648 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2650 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2651 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2652 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2655 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2659 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2660 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2662 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2663 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2665 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2666 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2667 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2669 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2671 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2674 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2676 ** Configuration option
2678 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2679 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2683 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2684 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2688 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2689 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2690 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2693 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2694 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2695 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2696 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2697 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2698 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2699 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2702 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2706 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2707 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2708 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2710 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2711 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2713 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2715 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2716 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2717 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2718 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2720 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2722 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2723 not just the ones that reference directories
2725 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2726 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2728 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2729 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2730 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2732 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2733 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2734 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2735 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2736 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2737 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2739 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2744 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2745 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2747 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2749 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2751 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2753 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2754 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2756 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2757 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2759 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2761 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2765 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2767 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2769 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2770 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2771 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2772 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2773 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2775 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2776 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2778 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2779 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2781 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2782 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2784 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2785 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2786 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2790 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2791 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2792 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2793 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2794 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2795 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2796 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2797 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2798 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2799 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2800 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2801 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2802 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2803 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2805 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2807 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2808 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2810 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2812 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2814 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2815 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2817 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2819 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2820 without a trailing newline.
2822 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2823 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2825 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2828 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2832 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2834 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2836 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2837 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2838 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2839 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2841 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2843 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2844 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2845 be printed without leading spaces.
2847 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2848 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2853 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2854 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2855 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2857 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2859 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2860 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2862 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2863 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2865 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2866 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2868 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2870 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2872 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2874 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2875 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2877 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2879 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2881 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2882 byte offsets are specified.
2885 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2888 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2891 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2892 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2893 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2894 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2895 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2896 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2897 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2898 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2899 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2900 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2901 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2902 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2903 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2904 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2905 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2906 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2907 directory where M has write access.
2908 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2909 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2910 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2913 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2914 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2915 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2916 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2917 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2918 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2919 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2920 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2921 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2922 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2923 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2924 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2925 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2926 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2927 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2928 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2929 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2930 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2931 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2932 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2933 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2934 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2935 appeared one additional time.
2937 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2938 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2939 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2940 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2943 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2944 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2945 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2946 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2947 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2948 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2949 if there were more than 338.
2951 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2952 - false --help now exits nonzero
2955 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2956 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2957 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2958 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2961 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2962 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2963 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2964 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2965 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2968 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2969 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2970 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2971 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2972 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2973 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2974 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2977 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2978 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2979 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2980 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2981 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2982 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2984 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2985 under certain unusual conditions
2986 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2987 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2990 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2991 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2992 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2993 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2994 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2995 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2996 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2997 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2998 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2999 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
3000 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3001 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3002 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3003 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3004 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3005 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3008 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3009 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3012 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3013 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3014 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3015 involving hard-linked directories
3016 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3017 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
3018 character-special and block files
3021 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3022 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3023 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3024 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3025 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3026 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3027 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3028 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3029 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3031 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
3032 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
3033 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3034 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3035 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3036 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3037 specified on the command line.
3038 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3039 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
3040 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3041 the first file untouched.
3042 * readlink: new program
3043 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3044 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3045 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3046 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3047 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3048 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3051 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3052 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3053 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3054 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3055 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3056 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3057 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
3058 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
3059 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3060 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3061 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3062 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3064 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3065 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3066 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3068 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3069 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3070 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3071 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3072 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3073 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3074 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3075 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
3078 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3079 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3082 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3083 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3084 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3085 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3086 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
3087 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3088 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3091 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3092 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3094 ========================================================================
3095 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3096 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3099 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3101 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3102 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3103 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3104 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3105 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3106 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3107 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3108 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
3109 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3110 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3111 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3112 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3114 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3115 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3116 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3117 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3119 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3122 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3124 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3125 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3126 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3127 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3128 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3129 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3130 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3133 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3134 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3135 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3136 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3137 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3138 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3139 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3140 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3141 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3142 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3143 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3144 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3145 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3146 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3147 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3148 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3150 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3151 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3153 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3154 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3155 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3156 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3157 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3158 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3160 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3161 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3162 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3163 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3164 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3165 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3166 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3168 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3169 the source files in the following example:
3170 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3171 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3172 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3173 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3174 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3175 links between source files with --preserve=links
3176 * cp accepts new options:
3177 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3178 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3179 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3180 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3181 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3182 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3183 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3184 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3185 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3187 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3188 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3189 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3190 even though it's older than dest.
3191 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3192 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3193 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3194 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3195 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3197 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3198 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3199 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3200 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3201 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3202 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3203 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3205 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3206 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3207 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3209 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3210 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3211 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3212 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3213 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3214 This is the default.
3216 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3217 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3218 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3219 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3220 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3222 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3225 ========================================================================
3226 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3227 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3230 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3231 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3233 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3234 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3235 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3236 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3237 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3239 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3240 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3241 that specifies a non-directory
3244 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3245 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3246 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3247 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3248 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3249 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3250 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3251 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3252 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3253 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3254 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3255 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3256 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3257 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3258 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3259 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3260 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3261 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3262 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3263 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3264 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3265 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3266 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3267 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3269 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3270 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3271 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3273 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3275 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3276 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3278 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3279 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3280 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3281 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3282 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3284 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3285 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3286 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3287 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3288 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3290 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3292 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3293 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3294 * still more portability fixes
3295 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3296 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3298 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3300 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3302 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3304 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3305 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3306 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3307 there is any time remaining
3308 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3310 ========================================================================
3311 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3312 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3314 This package began as the union of the following:
3315 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3317 ========================================================================
3319 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3321 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3322 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3323 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3324 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3325 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3326 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.