1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.1 (2005-??-??) [unstable]
5 ** Changes for better compliance with POSIX
9 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
11 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
12 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
16 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
18 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
20 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
24 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
25 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
26 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
28 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
29 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
30 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
31 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
32 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
34 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
38 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
39 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
40 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
41 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
43 expr now detects integer overflow when evaluating large integers,
44 rather than silently wrapping around.
46 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
47 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
49 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
50 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
52 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
54 test now detects integer overflow when evaluating large integers,
55 rather than silently wrapping around.
57 ** Improved portability
59 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
61 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
62 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
66 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
67 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
68 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
70 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
74 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
76 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
77 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
78 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
80 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
81 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
83 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
84 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
85 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
87 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
88 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
90 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
91 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
92 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
93 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
95 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
96 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
98 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
99 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
100 the file system does not support it.
102 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
104 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
105 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
107 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
109 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
110 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
112 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
113 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
114 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
115 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
117 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
118 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
121 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
122 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
123 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
124 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
126 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
127 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
128 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
129 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
131 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
132 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
134 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
136 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
137 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
138 reporting incorrect results.
142 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
143 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
145 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
146 value happens to be -1.
148 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
150 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
151 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
153 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
154 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
156 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
159 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
160 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
161 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
162 the file name does not look like a page range.
164 printf has several changes:
166 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
167 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
169 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
170 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
171 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
173 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
174 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
177 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
178 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
180 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
181 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
183 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
184 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
186 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
188 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
190 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
191 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
192 when first encountering the directory.
196 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
197 output; POSIX requires this.
199 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
200 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
202 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
204 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
205 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
207 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
208 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
210 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
211 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
212 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
213 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
214 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
215 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
216 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
218 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
219 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
220 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
222 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
223 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
225 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
227 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
229 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
230 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
231 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
232 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
234 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
238 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
239 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
240 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
241 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
242 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
244 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
245 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
246 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
248 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
249 is longer than PATH_MAX.
251 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
252 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
254 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
255 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
256 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
257 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
258 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
260 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
261 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
263 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
264 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
266 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
268 nocreat do not create the output file
269 excl fail if the output file already exists
270 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
271 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
273 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
275 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
276 direct use direct I/O for data
277 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
278 sync likewise, but also for metadata
279 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
280 nofollow do not follow symlinks
281 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
283 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
285 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
286 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
289 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
290 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
291 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
292 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
293 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
294 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
296 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
297 list of NUL-terminated file names.
299 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
302 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
304 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
306 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
307 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
309 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
310 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
311 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
313 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
314 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
315 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
317 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
319 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
320 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
322 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
323 for compatibility with bash.
325 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
327 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
328 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
329 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
330 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
332 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
333 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
335 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
337 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
338 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
339 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
341 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
344 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
346 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
347 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
348 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
349 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
350 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
351 an offset, not as a file name.
353 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
354 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
356 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
357 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
359 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
360 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
362 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
363 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
364 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
366 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
367 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
371 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
373 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
375 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
379 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
380 or more arguments between partitions.
382 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
383 holes in the destination.
385 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
386 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
387 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
388 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
389 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
390 terminates immediately.
392 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
394 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
396 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
397 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
398 not the empty string.
400 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
401 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
405 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
406 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
407 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
410 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
417 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
421 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
422 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
424 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
425 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
427 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
428 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
429 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
432 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
436 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
437 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
439 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
440 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
442 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
443 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
444 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
446 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
448 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
451 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
453 ** Configuration option
455 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
456 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
460 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
461 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
465 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
466 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
467 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
470 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
471 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
472 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
473 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
474 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
475 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
478 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
482 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
483 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
484 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
486 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
487 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
489 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
491 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
492 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
493 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
494 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
496 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
498 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
499 not just the ones that reference directories
501 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
502 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
504 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
505 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
506 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
508 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
509 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
510 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
511 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
512 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
513 ragged when a datum was too wide.
515 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
520 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
521 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
523 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
525 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
527 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
529 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
530 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
532 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
533 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
535 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
537 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
541 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
543 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
545 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
546 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
547 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
548 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
549 resolution is the best we can do right now.
551 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
552 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
554 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
555 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
557 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
558 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
560 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
561 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
562 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
566 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
567 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
568 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
569 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
570 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
571 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
572 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
573 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
574 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
575 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
576 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
577 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
578 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
579 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
581 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
583 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
584 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
586 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
588 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
590 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
591 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
593 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
595 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
596 without a trailing newline.
598 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
599 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
601 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
604 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
608 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
610 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
612 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
613 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
614 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
615 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
617 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
619 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
620 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
621 be printed without leading spaces.
623 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
624 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
629 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
630 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
631 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
633 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
635 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
636 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
638 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
639 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
641 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
642 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
644 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
646 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
648 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
650 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
651 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
653 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
655 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
657 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
658 byte offsets are specified.
661 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
664 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
667 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
668 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
669 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
670 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
671 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
672 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
673 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
674 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
675 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
676 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
677 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
678 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
679 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
680 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
681 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
682 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
683 directory where M has write access.
684 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
685 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
686 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
689 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
690 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
691 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
692 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
693 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
694 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
695 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
696 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
697 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
698 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
699 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
700 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
701 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
702 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
703 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
704 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
705 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
706 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
707 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
708 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
709 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
710 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
711 appeared one additional time.
713 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
714 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
715 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
716 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
719 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
720 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
721 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
722 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
723 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
724 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
725 if there were more than 338.
727 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
728 - false --help now exits nonzero
731 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
732 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
733 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
734 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
737 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
738 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
739 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
740 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
741 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
744 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
745 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
746 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
747 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
748 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
749 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
750 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
753 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
754 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
755 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
756 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
757 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
758 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
760 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
761 under certain unusual conditions
762 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
763 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
766 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
767 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
768 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
769 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
770 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
771 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
772 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
773 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
774 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
775 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
776 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
777 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
778 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
779 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
780 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
781 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
784 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
785 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
788 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
789 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
790 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
791 involving hard-linked directories
792 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
793 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
794 character-special and block files
797 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
798 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
799 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
800 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
801 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
802 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
803 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
804 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
805 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
807 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
808 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
809 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
810 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
811 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
812 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
813 specified on the command line.
814 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
815 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
816 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
817 the first file untouched.
818 * readlink: new program
819 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
820 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
821 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
822 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
823 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
824 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
827 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
828 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
829 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
830 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
831 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
832 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
833 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
834 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
835 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
836 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
837 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
838 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
840 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
841 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
842 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
844 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
845 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
846 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
847 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
848 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
849 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
850 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
851 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
854 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
855 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
858 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
859 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
860 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
861 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
862 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
863 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
864 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
867 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
868 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
870 ========================================================================
871 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
872 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
875 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
877 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
878 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
879 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
880 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
881 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
882 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
883 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
884 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
885 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
886 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
887 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
888 The old options will continue to work for a while.
890 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
891 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
892 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
893 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
895 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
898 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
900 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
901 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
902 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
903 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
904 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
905 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
906 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
909 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
910 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
911 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
912 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
913 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
914 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
915 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
916 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
917 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
918 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
919 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
920 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
921 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
922 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
923 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
924 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
926 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
927 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
929 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
930 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
931 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
932 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
933 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
934 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
936 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
937 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
938 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
939 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
940 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
941 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
942 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
944 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
945 the source files in the following example:
946 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
947 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
948 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
949 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
950 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
951 links between source files with --preserve=links
952 * cp accepts new options:
953 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
954 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
955 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
956 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
957 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
958 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
959 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
960 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
961 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
963 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
964 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
965 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
966 even though it's older than dest.
967 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
968 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
969 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
970 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
971 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
973 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
974 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
975 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
976 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
977 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
978 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
979 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
981 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
982 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
983 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
985 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
986 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
987 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
988 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
989 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
992 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
993 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
994 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
995 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
996 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
998 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1001 ========================================================================
1002 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1003 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1006 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1007 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1009 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1010 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1011 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1012 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1013 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1015 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1016 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1017 that specifies a non-directory
1020 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1021 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1022 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1023 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1024 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
1025 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
1026 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1027 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1028 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1029 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1030 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1031 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1032 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1033 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1034 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1035 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1036 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1037 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1038 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1039 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1040 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1041 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1042 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1043 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1045 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1046 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1047 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1049 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1051 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1052 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1054 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1055 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1056 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1057 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1058 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1060 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1061 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1062 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1063 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1064 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1066 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1068 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1069 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1070 * still more portability fixes
1071 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1072 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1074 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1076 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1078 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1080 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1081 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1082 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1083 there is any time remaining
1084 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1086 ========================================================================
1087 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1088 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1090 This package began as the union of the following:
1091 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
projects / platform / upstream / coreutils.git / blob