1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.?? (2008-??-??) [stable]
7 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
9 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
10 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
12 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
13 in more cases when a directory is empty.
17 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
21 mkdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout, not stderr.
24 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
28 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
29 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
32 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
36 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
37 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
38 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
40 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
41 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
42 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
43 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
47 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
48 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
49 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
50 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
53 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
57 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
59 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
60 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
61 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
64 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
68 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
69 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
71 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
73 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
75 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
77 ** Programs no longer installed by default
81 ** Changes in behavior
83 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
84 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
86 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
87 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
89 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
90 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
91 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
95 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
96 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
97 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
98 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
99 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
100 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
101 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
102 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
103 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
104 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
105 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
107 The following commands and options now support the standard size
108 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
109 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
112 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
115 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
116 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
117 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
119 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
120 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
121 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
126 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
127 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
128 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
129 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
131 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
132 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
133 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
134 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
135 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
136 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
137 of "make check" fail.
139 ** Remove deprecated options
141 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
142 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
143 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
144 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
145 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
147 ** Improved robustness
149 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
150 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
151 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
152 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
153 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
154 loss of the contents of a/f.
156 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
157 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
161 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
162 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
163 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
165 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
166 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
167 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
168 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
170 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
171 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
172 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
173 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
174 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
175 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
176 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
177 destination is a symlink.
179 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
181 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
182 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
184 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
185 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
187 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
189 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
190 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
192 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
193 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
195 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
198 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
199 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
201 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
202 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
204 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
205 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
206 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
207 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
209 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
210 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
211 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
213 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
214 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
215 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
217 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
218 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
219 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
220 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
222 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
223 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
224 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
226 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
227 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
229 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
230 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
232 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
234 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
235 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
236 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
238 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
239 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
241 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
242 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
244 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
245 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
247 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
248 [present in the original version]
251 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
255 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
257 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
258 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
259 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
261 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
262 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
264 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
268 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
269 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
271 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
272 support but with insufficient /proc support.
274 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
275 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
277 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
278 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
279 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
280 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
281 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
282 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
284 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
285 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
288 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
289 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
291 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
294 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
295 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
296 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
298 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
299 directory is unreadable.
301 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
302 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
303 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
305 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
306 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
307 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
308 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
309 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
312 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
313 Before it would print nothing.
315 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
317 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
318 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
319 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
320 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
321 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
322 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
323 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
324 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
326 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
330 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
331 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
332 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
334 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
335 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
336 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
337 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
340 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
344 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
345 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
346 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
347 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
348 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
349 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
350 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
352 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
353 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
354 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
355 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
356 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
357 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
358 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
359 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
361 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
362 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
363 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
366 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
370 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
371 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
373 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
374 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
375 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
377 ** Improved robustness
379 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
380 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
381 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
384 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
388 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
389 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
390 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
391 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
392 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
394 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
398 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
401 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
405 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
406 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
407 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
408 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
410 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
411 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
413 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
414 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
415 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
418 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
420 ** Improved robustness
422 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
423 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
425 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
426 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
427 or NFS-mounted partition.
429 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
430 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
434 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
435 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
436 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
437 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
438 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
439 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
441 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
442 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
444 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
445 or neglect to report file removal.
447 For the "groups" command:
449 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
450 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
452 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
454 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
456 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
460 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
461 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
464 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
466 ** Changes in behavior
468 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
469 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
470 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
471 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
473 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
474 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
475 a final `./' or `../' component.
477 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
478 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
481 ** Infrastructure changes
483 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
484 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
485 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
486 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
490 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
493 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
494 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
495 dirent.d_type support.
497 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
498 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
500 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
501 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
502 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
503 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
506 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
508 ** Changes in behavior
510 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
514 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
515 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
519 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
520 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
521 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
523 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
524 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
526 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
527 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
529 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
531 ** Improved robustness
533 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
534 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
535 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
537 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
538 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
541 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
542 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
544 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
545 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
547 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
548 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
550 ** Changes in behavior
552 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
553 where the two are distinct.
555 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
556 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
557 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
558 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
559 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
560 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
561 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
562 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
563 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
564 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
565 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
566 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
567 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
568 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
569 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
570 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
571 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
573 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
574 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
575 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
577 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
578 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
579 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
580 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
583 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
584 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
588 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
589 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
590 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
591 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
593 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
594 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
595 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
597 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
598 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
599 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
600 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
601 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
604 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
605 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
607 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
608 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
609 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
610 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
612 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
613 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
614 successful and the output is easier to parse.
616 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
617 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
618 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
619 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
621 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
622 and sticky) with the -m option.
624 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
625 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
626 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
627 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
628 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
630 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
631 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
633 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
637 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
638 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
639 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
640 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
642 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
644 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
646 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
647 silently ignoring one of them.
649 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
650 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
651 containing this change was 5.92.
653 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
654 automatically newline terminated.
656 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
657 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
658 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
659 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
662 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
663 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
664 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
667 ** Scheduled for removal
669 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
670 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
672 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
673 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
674 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
675 command to unlink a directory.
677 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
678 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
679 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
680 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
684 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
685 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
686 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
687 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
688 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
689 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
693 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
694 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
696 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
698 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
699 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
700 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
702 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
703 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
706 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
707 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
709 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
710 list directories before files.
712 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
713 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
714 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
715 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
718 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
720 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
722 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
723 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
724 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
726 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
727 list of NUL-terminated file names.
731 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
732 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
733 usually printing nothing.
735 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
737 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
738 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
739 them with hard-linked directories.
741 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
742 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
743 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
745 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
746 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
747 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
749 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
752 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
753 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
755 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
756 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
758 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
759 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
761 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
762 all command-line arguments.
764 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
766 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
768 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
769 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
771 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
773 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
774 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
775 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
776 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
777 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
779 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
780 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
782 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
783 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
784 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
785 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
787 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
789 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
793 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
794 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
796 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
797 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
799 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
800 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
802 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
803 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
805 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
806 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
808 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
810 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
811 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
812 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
815 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
817 ** Build-related bug fixes
819 installing .mo files would fail
822 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
826 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
828 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
831 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
835 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
836 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
840 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
842 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
843 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
845 ** Deprecated options
847 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
848 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
850 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
854 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
856 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
857 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
858 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
859 conforming to older POSIX versions.
861 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
864 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
870 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
875 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
877 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
879 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
880 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
881 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
883 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
884 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
885 problematic usages. These include:
887 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
888 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
889 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
890 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
891 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
892 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
893 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
894 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
895 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
897 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
898 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
900 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
901 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
902 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
903 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
905 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
906 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
907 between binary and text files.
909 The following programs now always use text input/output:
913 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
917 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
918 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
921 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
923 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
924 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
926 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
927 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
928 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
930 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
932 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
934 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
935 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
936 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
940 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
942 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
943 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
945 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
946 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
947 blocks until F contains N blocks.
951 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
952 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
956 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
957 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
958 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
962 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
963 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
967 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
969 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
971 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
975 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
976 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
977 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
979 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
980 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
981 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
982 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
983 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
985 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
989 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
990 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
991 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
993 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
995 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
996 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
997 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
998 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1000 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1002 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1003 rather than silently wrapping around.
1005 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1006 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1008 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1009 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1011 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1012 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1013 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1014 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1016 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1018 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1020 ** Improved robustness
1022 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1023 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1024 no matter how large the result.
1026 ** Improved portability
1028 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1029 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1031 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1033 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1034 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1035 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1037 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1038 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1042 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1043 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1045 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1047 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1048 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1049 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1050 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1052 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1053 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1055 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1056 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1057 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1059 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1061 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1062 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1064 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1065 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1067 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1069 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1070 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1072 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1073 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1075 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1076 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1077 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1079 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1081 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1083 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1087 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1089 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1090 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1091 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1093 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1094 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1096 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1097 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1098 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1100 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1101 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1103 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1104 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1105 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1106 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1108 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1109 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1111 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1112 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1113 the file system does not support it.
1115 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1117 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1118 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1120 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1122 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1123 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1125 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1126 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1127 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1128 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1130 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1131 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1134 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1135 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1136 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1137 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1139 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1140 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1141 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1142 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1144 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1145 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1147 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1149 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1150 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1151 reporting incorrect results.
1155 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1156 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1158 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1161 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1163 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1164 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1166 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1167 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1169 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1172 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1173 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1174 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1175 the file name does not look like a page range.
1177 printf has several changes:
1179 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1180 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1182 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1183 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1184 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1186 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1187 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1190 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1191 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1193 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1194 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1196 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1198 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1199 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1201 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1203 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1205 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1206 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1207 when first encountering the directory.
1211 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1212 output; POSIX requires this.
1214 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1215 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1217 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1219 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1220 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1222 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1223 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1225 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1226 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1227 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1228 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1229 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1230 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1231 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1233 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1234 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1235 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1237 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1238 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1240 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1242 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1244 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1245 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1246 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1247 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1249 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1253 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1254 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1255 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1256 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1257 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1259 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1260 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1261 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1263 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1264 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1266 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1267 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1269 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1270 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1271 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1272 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1273 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1275 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1276 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1278 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1279 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1281 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1283 nocreat do not create the output file
1284 excl fail if the output file already exists
1285 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1286 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1288 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1290 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1291 direct use direct I/O for data
1292 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1293 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1294 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1295 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1296 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1298 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1300 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1301 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1304 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1305 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1306 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1307 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1308 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1309 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1311 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1312 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1314 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1317 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1319 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1321 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1322 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1324 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1325 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1326 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1328 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1329 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1330 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1332 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1334 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1335 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1337 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1338 for compatibility with bash.
1340 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1342 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1343 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1344 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1345 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1347 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1348 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1350 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1351 ls supports TABSIZE.
1352 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1353 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1354 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1356 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1359 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1361 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1362 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1363 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1364 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1365 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1366 an offset, not as a file name.
1368 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1369 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1371 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1372 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1374 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1375 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1377 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1378 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1379 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1381 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1382 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1384 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1385 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1389 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1391 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1393 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1397 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1398 or more arguments between partitions.
1400 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1401 holes in the destination.
1403 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1404 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1405 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1406 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1407 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1408 terminates immediately.
1410 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1412 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1414 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1415 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1416 not the empty string.
1418 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1419 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1423 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1424 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1425 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1428 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1435 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1439 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1440 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1442 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1443 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1445 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1446 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1447 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1450 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1454 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1455 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1457 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1458 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1460 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1461 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1462 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1464 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1466 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1469 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1471 ** Configuration option
1473 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1474 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1478 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1479 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1483 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1484 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1485 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1488 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1489 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1490 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1491 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1492 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1493 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1494 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1497 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1501 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1502 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1503 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1505 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1506 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1508 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1510 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1511 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1512 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1513 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1515 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1517 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1518 not just the ones that reference directories
1520 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1521 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1523 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1524 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1525 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1527 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1528 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1529 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1530 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1531 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1532 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1534 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1539 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1540 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1542 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1544 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1546 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1548 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1549 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1551 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1552 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1554 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1556 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1560 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1562 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1564 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1565 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1566 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1567 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1568 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1570 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1571 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1573 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1574 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1576 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1577 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1579 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1580 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1581 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1585 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1586 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1587 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1588 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1589 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1590 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1591 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1592 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1593 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1594 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1595 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1596 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1597 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1598 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1600 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1602 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1603 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1605 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1607 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1609 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1610 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1612 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1614 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1615 without a trailing newline.
1617 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1618 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1620 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1623 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1627 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1629 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1631 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1632 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1633 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1634 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1636 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1638 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1639 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1640 be printed without leading spaces.
1642 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1643 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1648 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1649 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1650 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1652 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1654 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1655 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1657 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1658 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1660 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1661 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1663 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1665 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1667 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1669 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1670 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1672 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1674 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1676 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1677 byte offsets are specified.
1680 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1683 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1686 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1687 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1688 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1689 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1690 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1691 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1692 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1693 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1694 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1695 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1696 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1697 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1698 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1699 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1700 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1701 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1702 directory where M has write access.
1703 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1704 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1705 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1708 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1709 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1710 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1711 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1712 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1713 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1714 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1715 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1716 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1717 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1718 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1719 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1720 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1721 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1722 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1723 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1724 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1725 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1726 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1727 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1728 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1729 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1730 appeared one additional time.
1732 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1733 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1734 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1735 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1738 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1739 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1740 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1741 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1742 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1743 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1744 if there were more than 338.
1746 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1747 - false --help now exits nonzero
1750 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1751 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1752 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1753 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1756 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1757 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1758 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1759 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1760 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1763 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1764 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1765 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1766 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1767 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1768 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1769 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1772 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1773 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1774 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1775 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1776 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1777 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1779 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1780 under certain unusual conditions
1781 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1782 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1785 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1786 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1787 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1788 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1789 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1790 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1791 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1792 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1793 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1794 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1795 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1796 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1797 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1798 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1799 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1800 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1803 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1804 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1807 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1808 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1809 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1810 involving hard-linked directories
1811 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1812 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1813 character-special and block files
1816 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1817 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1818 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1819 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1820 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1821 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1822 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1823 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1824 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1826 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1827 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1828 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1829 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1830 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1831 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1832 specified on the command line.
1833 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1834 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1835 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1836 the first file untouched.
1837 * readlink: new program
1838 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1839 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1840 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1841 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1842 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1843 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1846 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1847 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1848 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1849 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1850 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1851 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1852 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1853 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1854 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1855 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1856 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1857 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1859 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1860 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1861 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1863 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1864 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1865 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1866 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1867 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1868 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1869 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1870 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1873 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1874 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1877 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1878 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1879 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1880 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1881 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1882 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1883 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1886 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1887 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1889 ========================================================================
1890 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1891 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1894 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1896 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1897 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1898 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1899 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1900 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1901 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1902 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1903 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1904 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1905 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1906 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1907 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1909 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1910 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1911 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1912 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1914 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1917 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1919 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1920 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1921 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1922 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1923 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1924 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1925 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1928 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1929 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1930 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1931 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1932 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1933 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1934 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1935 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1936 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1937 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1938 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1939 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1940 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1941 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1942 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1943 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1945 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1946 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1948 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1949 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1950 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1951 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1952 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1953 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1955 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1956 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1957 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1958 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1959 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1960 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1961 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1963 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1964 the source files in the following example:
1965 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1966 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1967 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1968 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1969 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1970 links between source files with --preserve=links
1971 * cp accepts new options:
1972 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1973 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1974 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1975 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1976 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1977 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1978 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1979 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1980 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1982 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1983 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1984 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1985 even though it's older than dest.
1986 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1987 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1988 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1989 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1990 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1992 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1993 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1994 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1995 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1996 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1997 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1998 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2000 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2001 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2002 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2004 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2005 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2006 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2007 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2008 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2009 This is the default.
2011 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2012 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2013 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2014 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2015 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2017 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2020 ========================================================================
2021 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2022 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2025 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2026 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2028 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2029 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2030 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2031 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2032 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2034 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2035 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2036 that specifies a non-directory
2039 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2040 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2041 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2042 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2043 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2044 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2045 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2046 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2047 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2048 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2049 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2050 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2051 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2052 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2053 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2054 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2055 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2056 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2057 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2058 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2059 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2060 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2061 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2062 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2064 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2065 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2066 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2068 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2070 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2071 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2073 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2074 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2075 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2076 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2077 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2079 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2080 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2081 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2082 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2083 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2085 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2087 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2088 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2089 * still more portability fixes
2090 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2091 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2093 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2095 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2097 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2099 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2100 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2101 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2102 there is any time remaining
2103 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2105 ========================================================================
2106 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2107 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2109 This package began as the union of the following:
2110 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2112 ========================================================================
2114 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2117 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2118 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2119 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2120 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2121 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2122 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.