1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
7 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
8 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
9 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
10 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
11 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
13 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
17 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
20 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
24 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
25 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
26 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
27 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
29 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
30 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
32 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
33 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
34 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
37 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
39 ** Improved robustness
41 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
42 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
44 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
45 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
46 or NFS-mounted partition.
48 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
49 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
53 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
54 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
55 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
56 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
57 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
58 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
60 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
61 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
63 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
64 or neglect to report file removal.
66 For the "groups" command:
68 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
69 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
71 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
73 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
75 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
79 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
80 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
83 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
85 ** Changes in behavior
87 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
88 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
89 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
90 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
92 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
93 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
94 a final `./' or `../' component.
96 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
97 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
100 ** Infrastructure changes
102 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
103 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
104 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
105 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
109 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
112 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
113 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
114 dirent.d_type support.
116 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
117 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
119 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
120 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
121 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
122 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
125 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
127 ** Changes in behavior
129 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
133 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
134 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
138 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
139 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
140 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
142 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
143 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
145 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
146 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
148 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
150 ** Improved robustness
152 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
153 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
154 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
156 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
157 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
160 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
161 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
163 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
164 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
166 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
167 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
169 ** Changes in behavior
171 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
172 where the two are distinct.
174 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
175 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
176 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
177 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
178 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
179 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
180 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
181 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
182 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
183 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
184 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
185 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
186 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
187 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
188 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
189 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
190 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
192 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
193 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
194 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
196 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
197 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
198 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
199 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
202 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
203 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
207 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
208 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
209 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
210 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
212 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
213 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
214 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
216 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
217 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
218 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
219 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
220 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
223 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
224 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
226 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
227 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
228 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
229 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
231 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
232 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
233 successful and the output is easier to parse.
235 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
236 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
237 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
238 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
240 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
241 and sticky) with the -m option.
243 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
244 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
245 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
246 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
247 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
249 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
250 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
252 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
256 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
257 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
258 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
259 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
261 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
263 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
265 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
266 silently ignoring one of them.
268 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
269 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
270 containing this change was 5.92.
272 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
273 automatically newline terminated.
275 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
276 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
277 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
278 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
281 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
282 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
283 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
286 ** Scheduled for removal
288 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
289 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
291 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
292 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
293 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
294 command to unlink a directory.
296 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
297 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
298 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
299 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
303 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
304 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
305 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
306 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
307 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
308 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
312 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
313 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
315 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
317 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
318 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
319 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
321 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
322 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
325 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
326 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
328 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
329 list directories before files.
331 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
332 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
333 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
334 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
337 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
339 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
341 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
342 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
343 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
345 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
346 list of NUL-terminated file names.
350 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
351 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
352 usually printing nothing.
354 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
356 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
357 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
358 them with hard-linked directories.
360 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
361 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
362 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
364 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
365 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
366 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
368 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
371 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
372 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
374 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
375 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
377 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
378 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
380 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
381 all command-line arguments.
383 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
385 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
387 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
388 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
390 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
392 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
393 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
394 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
395 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
396 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
398 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
399 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
401 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
402 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
403 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
404 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
406 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
408 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
412 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
413 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
415 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
416 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
418 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
419 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
421 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
422 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
424 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
425 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
427 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
429 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
430 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
431 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
434 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
436 ** Build-related bug fixes
438 installing .mo files would fail
441 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
445 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
447 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
450 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
454 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
455 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
459 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
461 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
462 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
464 ** Deprecated options
466 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
467 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
469 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
473 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
475 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
476 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
477 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
478 conforming to older POSIX versions.
480 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
483 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
489 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
494 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
496 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
498 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
499 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
500 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
502 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
503 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
504 problematic usages. These include:
506 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
507 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
508 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
509 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
510 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
511 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
512 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
513 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
514 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
516 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
517 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
519 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
520 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
521 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
522 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
524 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
525 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
526 between binary and text files.
528 The following programs now always use text input/output:
532 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
536 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
537 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
540 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
542 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
543 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
545 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
546 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
547 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
549 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
551 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
553 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
554 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
555 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
559 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
561 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
562 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
564 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
565 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
566 blocks until F contains N blocks.
570 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
571 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
575 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
576 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
577 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
581 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
582 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
586 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
588 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
590 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
594 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
595 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
596 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
598 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
599 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
600 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
601 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
602 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
604 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
608 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
609 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
610 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
612 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
614 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
615 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
616 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
617 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
619 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
621 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
622 rather than silently wrapping around.
624 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
625 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
627 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
628 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
630 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
631 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
632 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
635 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
637 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
639 ** Improved robustness
641 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
642 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
643 no matter how large the result.
645 ** Improved portability
647 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
648 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
650 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
652 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
653 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
654 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
656 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
657 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
661 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
662 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
664 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
666 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
667 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
668 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
669 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
671 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
672 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
674 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
675 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
676 categories if not specified by dircolors.
678 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
680 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
681 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
683 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
684 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
686 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
688 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
689 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
691 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
692 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
694 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
695 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
696 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
698 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
700 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
702 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
706 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
708 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
709 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
710 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
712 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
713 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
715 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
716 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
717 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
719 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
720 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
722 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
723 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
724 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
725 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
727 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
728 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
730 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
731 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
732 the file system does not support it.
734 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
736 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
737 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
739 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
741 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
742 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
744 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
745 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
746 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
747 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
749 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
750 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
753 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
754 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
755 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
756 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
758 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
759 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
760 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
761 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
763 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
764 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
766 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
768 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
769 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
770 reporting incorrect results.
774 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
775 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
777 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
780 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
782 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
783 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
785 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
786 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
788 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
791 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
792 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
793 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
794 the file name does not look like a page range.
796 printf has several changes:
798 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
799 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
801 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
802 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
803 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
805 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
806 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
809 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
810 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
812 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
813 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
815 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
817 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
818 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
820 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
822 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
824 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
825 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
826 when first encountering the directory.
830 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
831 output; POSIX requires this.
833 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
834 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
836 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
838 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
839 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
841 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
842 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
844 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
845 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
846 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
847 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
848 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
849 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
850 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
852 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
853 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
854 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
856 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
857 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
859 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
861 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
863 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
864 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
865 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
866 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
868 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
872 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
873 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
874 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
875 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
876 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
878 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
879 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
880 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
882 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
883 is longer than PATH_MAX.
885 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
886 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
888 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
889 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
890 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
891 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
892 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
894 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
895 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
897 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
898 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
900 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
902 nocreat do not create the output file
903 excl fail if the output file already exists
904 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
905 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
907 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
909 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
910 direct use direct I/O for data
911 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
912 sync likewise, but also for metadata
913 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
914 nofollow do not follow symlinks
915 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
917 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
919 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
920 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
923 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
924 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
925 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
926 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
927 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
928 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
930 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
931 list of NUL-terminated file names.
933 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
936 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
938 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
940 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
941 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
943 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
944 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
945 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
947 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
948 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
949 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
951 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
953 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
954 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
956 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
957 for compatibility with bash.
959 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
961 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
962 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
963 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
964 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
966 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
967 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
969 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
971 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
972 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
973 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
975 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
978 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
980 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
981 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
982 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
983 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
984 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
985 an offset, not as a file name.
987 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
988 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
990 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
991 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
993 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
994 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
996 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
997 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
998 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1000 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1001 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1003 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1004 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1008 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1010 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1012 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1016 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1017 or more arguments between partitions.
1019 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1020 holes in the destination.
1022 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1023 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1024 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1025 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1026 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1027 terminates immediately.
1029 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1031 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1033 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1034 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1035 not the empty string.
1037 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1038 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1042 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1043 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1044 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1047 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1054 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1058 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1059 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1061 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1062 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1064 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1065 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1066 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1069 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1073 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1074 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1076 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1077 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1079 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1080 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1081 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1083 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1085 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1088 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1090 ** Configuration option
1092 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1093 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1097 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1098 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1102 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1103 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1104 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1107 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1108 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1109 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1110 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1111 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1112 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1113 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1116 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1120 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1121 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1122 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1124 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1125 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1127 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1129 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1130 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1131 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1132 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1134 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1136 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1137 not just the ones that reference directories
1139 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1140 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1142 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1143 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1144 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1146 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1147 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1148 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1149 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1150 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1151 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1153 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1158 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1159 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1161 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1163 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1165 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1167 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1168 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1170 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1171 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1173 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1175 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1179 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1181 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1183 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1184 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1185 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1186 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1187 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1189 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1190 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1192 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1193 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1195 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1196 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1198 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1199 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1200 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1204 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1205 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1206 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1207 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1208 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1209 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1210 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1211 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1212 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1213 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1214 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1215 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1216 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1217 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1219 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1221 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1222 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1224 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1226 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1228 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1229 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1231 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1233 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1234 without a trailing newline.
1236 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1237 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1239 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1242 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1246 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1248 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1250 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1251 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1252 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1253 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1255 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1257 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1258 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1259 be printed without leading spaces.
1261 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1262 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1267 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1268 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1269 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1271 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1273 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1274 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1276 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1277 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1279 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1280 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1282 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1284 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1286 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1288 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1289 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1291 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1293 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1295 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1296 byte offsets are specified.
1299 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1302 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1305 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1306 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1307 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1308 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1309 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1310 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1311 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1312 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1313 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1314 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1315 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1316 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1317 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1318 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1319 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1320 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1321 directory where M has write access.
1322 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1323 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1324 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1327 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1328 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1329 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1330 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1331 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1332 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1333 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1334 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1335 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1336 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1337 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1338 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1339 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1340 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1341 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1342 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1343 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1344 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1345 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1346 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1347 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1348 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1349 appeared one additional time.
1351 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1352 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1353 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1354 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1357 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1358 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1359 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1360 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1361 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1362 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1363 if there were more than 338.
1365 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1366 - false --help now exits nonzero
1369 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1370 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1371 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1372 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1375 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1376 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1377 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1378 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1379 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1382 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1383 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1384 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1385 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1386 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1387 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1388 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1391 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1392 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1393 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1394 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1395 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1396 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1398 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1399 under certain unusual conditions
1400 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1401 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1404 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1405 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1406 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1407 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1408 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1409 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1410 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1411 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1412 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1413 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1414 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1415 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1416 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1417 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1418 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1419 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1422 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1423 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1426 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1427 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1428 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1429 involving hard-linked directories
1430 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1431 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1432 character-special and block files
1435 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1436 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1437 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1438 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1439 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1440 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1441 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1442 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1443 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1445 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1446 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1447 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1448 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1449 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1450 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1451 specified on the command line.
1452 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1453 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1454 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1455 the first file untouched.
1456 * readlink: new program
1457 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1458 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1459 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1460 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1461 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1462 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1465 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1466 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1467 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1468 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1469 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1470 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1471 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1472 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1473 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1474 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1475 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1476 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1478 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1479 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1480 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1482 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1483 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1484 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1485 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1486 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1487 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1488 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1489 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1492 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1493 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1496 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1497 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1498 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1499 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1500 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1501 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1502 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1505 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1506 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1508 ========================================================================
1509 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1510 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1513 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1515 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1516 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1517 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1518 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1519 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1520 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1521 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1522 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1523 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1524 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1525 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1526 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1528 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1529 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1530 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1531 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1533 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1536 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1538 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1539 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1540 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1541 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1542 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1543 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1544 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1547 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1548 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1549 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1550 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1551 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1552 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1553 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1554 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1555 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1556 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1557 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1558 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1559 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1560 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1561 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1562 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1564 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1565 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1567 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1568 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1569 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1570 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1571 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1572 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1574 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1575 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1576 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1577 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1578 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1579 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1580 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1582 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1583 the source files in the following example:
1584 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1585 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1586 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1587 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1588 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1589 links between source files with --preserve=links
1590 * cp accepts new options:
1591 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1592 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1593 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1594 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1595 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1596 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1597 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1598 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1599 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1601 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1602 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1603 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1604 even though it's older than dest.
1605 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1606 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1607 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1608 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1609 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1611 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1612 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1613 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1614 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1615 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1616 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1617 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1619 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1620 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1621 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1623 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1624 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1625 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1626 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1627 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1628 This is the default.
1630 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1631 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1632 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1633 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1634 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1636 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1639 ========================================================================
1640 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1641 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1644 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1645 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1647 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1648 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1649 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1650 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1651 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1653 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1654 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1655 that specifies a non-directory
1658 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1659 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1660 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1661 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1662 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1663 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1664 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1665 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1666 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1667 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1668 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1669 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1670 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1671 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1672 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1673 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1674 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1675 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1676 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1677 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1678 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1679 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1680 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1681 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1683 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1684 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1685 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1687 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1689 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1690 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1692 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1693 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1694 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1695 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1696 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1698 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1699 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1700 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1701 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1702 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1704 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1706 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1707 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1708 * still more portability fixes
1709 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1710 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1712 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1714 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1716 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1718 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1719 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1720 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1721 there is any time remaining
1722 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1724 ========================================================================
1725 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1726 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1728 This package began as the union of the following:
1729 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1731 ========================================================================
1733 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1736 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1737 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1738 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1739 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1740 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1741 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.