1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.?? (2008-??-??) [stable]
7 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
9 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
10 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
12 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
13 in more cases when a directory is empty.
15 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
16 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
17 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
21 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
22 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
26 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
28 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
32 mkdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout, not stderr.
35 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
39 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
40 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
43 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
47 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
48 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
49 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
51 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
52 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
53 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
54 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
58 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
59 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
60 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
61 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
64 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
68 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
70 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
71 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
72 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
75 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
79 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
80 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
82 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
84 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
86 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
88 ** Programs no longer installed by default
92 ** Changes in behavior
94 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
95 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
97 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
98 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
100 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
101 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
102 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
106 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
107 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
108 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
109 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
110 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
111 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
112 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
113 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
114 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
115 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
116 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
118 The following commands and options now support the standard size
119 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
120 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
123 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
126 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
127 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
128 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
130 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
131 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
132 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
137 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
138 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
139 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
140 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
142 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
143 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
144 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
145 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
146 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
147 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
148 of "make check" fail.
150 ** Remove deprecated options
152 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
153 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
154 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
155 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
156 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
158 ** Improved robustness
160 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
161 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
162 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
163 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
164 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
165 loss of the contents of a/f.
167 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
168 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
172 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
173 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
174 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
176 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
177 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
178 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
179 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
181 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
182 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
183 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
184 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
185 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
186 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
187 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
188 destination is a symlink.
190 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
192 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
193 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
195 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
196 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
198 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
200 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
201 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
203 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
204 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
206 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
209 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
210 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
212 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
213 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
215 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
216 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
217 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
218 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
220 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
221 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
222 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
224 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
225 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
226 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
228 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
229 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
230 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
231 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
233 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
234 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
235 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
237 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
238 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
240 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
241 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
243 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
245 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
246 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
247 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
249 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
250 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
252 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
253 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
255 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
256 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
258 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
259 [present in the original version]
262 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
266 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
268 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
269 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
270 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
272 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
273 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
275 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
279 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
280 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
282 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
283 support but with insufficient /proc support.
285 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
286 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
288 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
289 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
290 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
291 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
292 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
293 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
295 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
296 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
299 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
300 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
302 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
305 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
306 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
307 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
309 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
310 directory is unreadable.
312 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
313 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
314 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
316 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
317 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
318 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
319 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
320 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
323 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
324 Before it would print nothing.
326 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
328 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
329 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
330 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
331 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
332 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
333 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
334 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
335 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
337 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
341 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
342 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
343 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
345 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
346 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
347 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
348 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
351 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
355 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
356 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
357 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
358 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
359 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
360 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
361 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
363 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
364 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
365 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
366 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
367 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
368 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
369 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
370 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
372 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
373 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
374 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
377 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
381 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
382 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
384 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
385 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
386 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
388 ** Improved robustness
390 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
391 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
392 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
395 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
399 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
400 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
401 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
402 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
403 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
405 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
409 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
412 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
416 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
417 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
418 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
419 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
421 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
422 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
424 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
425 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
426 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
429 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
431 ** Improved robustness
433 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
434 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
436 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
437 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
438 or NFS-mounted partition.
440 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
441 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
445 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
446 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
447 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
448 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
449 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
450 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
452 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
453 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
455 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
456 or neglect to report file removal.
458 For the "groups" command:
460 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
461 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
463 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
465 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
467 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
471 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
472 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
475 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
477 ** Changes in behavior
479 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
480 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
481 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
482 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
484 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
485 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
486 a final `./' or `../' component.
488 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
489 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
492 ** Infrastructure changes
494 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
495 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
496 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
497 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
501 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
504 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
505 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
506 dirent.d_type support.
508 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
509 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
511 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
512 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
513 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
514 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
517 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
519 ** Changes in behavior
521 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
525 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
526 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
530 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
531 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
532 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
534 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
535 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
537 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
538 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
540 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
542 ** Improved robustness
544 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
545 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
546 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
548 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
549 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
552 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
553 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
555 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
556 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
558 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
559 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
561 ** Changes in behavior
563 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
564 where the two are distinct.
566 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
567 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
568 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
569 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
570 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
571 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
572 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
573 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
574 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
575 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
576 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
577 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
578 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
579 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
580 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
581 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
582 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
584 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
585 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
586 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
588 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
589 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
590 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
591 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
594 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
595 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
599 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
600 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
601 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
602 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
604 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
605 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
606 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
608 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
609 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
610 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
611 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
612 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
615 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
616 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
618 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
619 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
620 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
621 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
623 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
624 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
625 successful and the output is easier to parse.
627 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
628 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
629 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
630 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
632 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
633 and sticky) with the -m option.
635 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
636 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
637 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
638 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
639 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
641 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
642 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
644 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
648 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
649 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
650 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
651 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
653 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
655 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
657 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
658 silently ignoring one of them.
660 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
661 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
662 containing this change was 5.92.
664 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
665 automatically newline terminated.
667 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
668 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
669 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
670 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
673 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
674 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
675 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
678 ** Scheduled for removal
680 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
681 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
683 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
684 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
685 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
686 command to unlink a directory.
688 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
689 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
690 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
691 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
695 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
696 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
697 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
698 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
699 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
700 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
704 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
705 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
707 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
709 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
710 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
711 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
713 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
714 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
717 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
718 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
720 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
721 list directories before files.
723 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
724 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
725 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
726 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
729 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
731 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
733 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
734 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
735 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
737 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
738 list of NUL-terminated file names.
742 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
743 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
744 usually printing nothing.
746 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
748 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
749 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
750 them with hard-linked directories.
752 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
753 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
754 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
756 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
757 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
758 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
760 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
763 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
764 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
766 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
767 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
769 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
770 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
772 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
773 all command-line arguments.
775 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
777 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
779 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
780 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
782 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
784 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
785 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
786 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
787 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
788 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
790 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
791 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
793 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
794 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
795 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
796 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
798 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
800 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
804 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
805 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
807 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
808 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
810 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
811 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
813 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
814 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
816 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
817 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
819 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
821 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
822 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
823 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
826 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
828 ** Build-related bug fixes
830 installing .mo files would fail
833 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
837 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
839 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
842 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
846 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
847 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
851 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
853 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
854 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
856 ** Deprecated options
858 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
859 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
861 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
865 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
867 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
868 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
869 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
870 conforming to older POSIX versions.
872 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
875 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
881 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
886 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
888 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
890 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
891 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
892 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
894 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
895 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
896 problematic usages. These include:
898 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
899 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
900 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
901 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
902 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
903 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
904 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
905 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
906 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
908 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
909 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
911 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
912 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
913 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
914 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
916 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
917 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
918 between binary and text files.
920 The following programs now always use text input/output:
924 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
928 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
929 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
932 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
934 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
935 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
937 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
938 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
939 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
941 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
943 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
945 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
946 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
947 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
951 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
953 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
954 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
956 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
957 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
958 blocks until F contains N blocks.
962 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
963 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
967 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
968 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
969 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
973 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
974 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
978 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
980 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
982 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
986 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
987 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
988 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
990 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
991 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
992 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
993 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
994 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
996 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1000 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1001 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1002 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1004 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1006 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1007 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1008 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1009 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1011 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1013 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1014 rather than silently wrapping around.
1016 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1017 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1019 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1020 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1022 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1023 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1024 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1025 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1027 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1029 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1031 ** Improved robustness
1033 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1034 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1035 no matter how large the result.
1037 ** Improved portability
1039 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1040 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1042 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1044 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1045 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1046 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1048 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1049 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1053 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1054 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1056 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1058 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1059 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1060 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1061 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1063 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1064 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1066 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1067 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1068 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1070 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1072 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1073 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1075 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1076 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1078 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1080 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1081 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1083 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1084 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1086 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1087 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1088 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1090 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1092 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1094 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1098 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1100 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1101 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1102 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1104 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1105 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1107 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1108 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1109 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1111 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1112 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1114 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1115 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1116 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1117 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1119 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1120 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1122 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1123 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1124 the file system does not support it.
1126 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1128 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1129 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1131 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1133 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1134 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1136 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1137 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1138 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1139 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1141 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1142 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1145 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1146 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1147 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1148 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1150 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1151 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1152 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1153 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1155 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1156 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1158 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1160 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1161 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1162 reporting incorrect results.
1166 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1167 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1169 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1172 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1174 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1175 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1177 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1178 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1180 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1183 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1184 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1185 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1186 the file name does not look like a page range.
1188 printf has several changes:
1190 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1191 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1193 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1194 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1195 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1197 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1198 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1201 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1202 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1204 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1205 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1207 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1209 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1210 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1212 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1214 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1216 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1217 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1218 when first encountering the directory.
1222 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1223 output; POSIX requires this.
1225 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1226 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1228 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1230 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1231 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1233 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1234 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1236 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1237 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1238 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1239 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1240 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1241 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1242 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1244 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1245 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1246 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1248 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1249 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1251 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1253 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1255 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1256 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1257 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1258 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1260 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1264 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1265 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1266 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1267 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1268 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1270 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1271 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1272 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1274 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1275 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1277 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1278 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1280 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1281 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1282 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1283 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1284 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1286 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1287 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1289 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1290 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1292 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1294 nocreat do not create the output file
1295 excl fail if the output file already exists
1296 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1297 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1299 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1301 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1302 direct use direct I/O for data
1303 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1304 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1305 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1306 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1307 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1309 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1311 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1312 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1315 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1316 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1317 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1318 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1319 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1320 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1322 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1323 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1325 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1328 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1330 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1332 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1333 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1335 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1336 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1337 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1339 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1340 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1341 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1343 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1345 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1346 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1348 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1349 for compatibility with bash.
1351 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1353 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1354 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1355 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1356 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1358 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1359 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1361 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1362 ls supports TABSIZE.
1363 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1364 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1365 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1367 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1370 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1372 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1373 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1374 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1375 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1376 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1377 an offset, not as a file name.
1379 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1380 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1382 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1383 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1385 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1386 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1388 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1389 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1390 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1392 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1393 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1395 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1396 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1400 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1402 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1404 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1408 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1409 or more arguments between partitions.
1411 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1412 holes in the destination.
1414 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1415 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1416 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1417 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1418 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1419 terminates immediately.
1421 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1423 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1425 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1426 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1427 not the empty string.
1429 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1430 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1434 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1435 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1436 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1439 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1446 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1450 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1451 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1453 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1454 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1456 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1457 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1458 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1461 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1465 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1466 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1468 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1469 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1471 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1472 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1473 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1475 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1477 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1480 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1482 ** Configuration option
1484 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1485 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1489 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1490 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1494 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1495 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1496 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1499 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1500 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1501 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1502 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1503 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1504 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1505 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1508 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1512 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1513 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1514 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1516 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1517 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1519 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1521 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1522 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1523 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1524 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1526 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1528 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1529 not just the ones that reference directories
1531 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1532 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1534 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1535 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1536 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1538 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1539 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1540 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1541 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1542 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1543 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1545 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1550 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1551 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1553 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1555 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1557 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1559 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1560 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1562 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1563 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1565 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1567 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1571 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1573 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1575 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1576 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1577 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1578 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1579 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1581 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1582 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1584 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1585 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1587 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1588 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1590 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1591 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1592 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1596 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1597 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1598 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1599 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1600 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1601 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1602 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1603 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1604 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1605 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1606 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1607 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1608 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1609 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1611 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1613 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1614 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1616 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1618 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1620 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1621 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1623 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1625 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1626 without a trailing newline.
1628 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1629 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1631 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1634 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1638 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1640 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1642 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1643 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1644 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1645 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1647 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1649 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1650 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1651 be printed without leading spaces.
1653 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1654 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1659 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1660 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1661 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1663 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1665 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1666 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1668 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1669 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1671 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1672 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1674 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1676 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1678 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1680 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1681 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1683 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1685 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1687 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1688 byte offsets are specified.
1691 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1694 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1697 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1698 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1699 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1700 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1701 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1702 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1703 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1704 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1705 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1706 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1707 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1708 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1709 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1710 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1711 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1712 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1713 directory where M has write access.
1714 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1715 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1716 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1719 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1720 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1721 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1722 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1723 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1724 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1725 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1726 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1727 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1728 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1729 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1730 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1731 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1732 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1733 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1734 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1735 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1736 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1737 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1738 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1739 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1740 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1741 appeared one additional time.
1743 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1744 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1745 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1746 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1749 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1750 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1751 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1752 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1753 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1754 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1755 if there were more than 338.
1757 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1758 - false --help now exits nonzero
1761 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1762 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1763 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1764 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1767 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1768 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1769 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1770 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1771 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1774 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1775 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1776 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1777 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1778 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1779 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1780 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1783 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1784 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1785 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1786 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1787 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1788 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1790 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1791 under certain unusual conditions
1792 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1793 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1796 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1797 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1798 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1799 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1800 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1801 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1802 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1803 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1804 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1805 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1806 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1807 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1808 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1809 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1810 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1811 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1814 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1815 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1818 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1819 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1820 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1821 involving hard-linked directories
1822 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1823 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1824 character-special and block files
1827 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1828 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1829 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1830 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1831 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1832 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1833 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1834 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1835 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1837 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1838 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1839 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1840 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1841 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1842 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1843 specified on the command line.
1844 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1845 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1846 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1847 the first file untouched.
1848 * readlink: new program
1849 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1850 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1851 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1852 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1853 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1854 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1857 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1858 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1859 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1860 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1861 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1862 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1863 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1864 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1865 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1866 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1867 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1868 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1870 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1871 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1872 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1874 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1875 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1876 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1877 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1878 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1879 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1880 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1881 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1884 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1885 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1888 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1889 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1890 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1891 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1892 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1893 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1894 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1897 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1898 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1900 ========================================================================
1901 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1902 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1905 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1907 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1908 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1909 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1910 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1911 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1912 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1913 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1914 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1915 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1916 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1917 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1918 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1920 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1921 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1922 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1923 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1925 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1928 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1930 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1931 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1932 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1933 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1934 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1935 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1936 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1939 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1940 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1941 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1942 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1943 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1944 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1945 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1946 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1947 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1948 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1949 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1950 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1951 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1952 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1953 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1954 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1956 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1957 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1959 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1960 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1961 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1962 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1963 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1964 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1966 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1967 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1968 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1969 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1970 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1971 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1972 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1974 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1975 the source files in the following example:
1976 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1977 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1978 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1979 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1980 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1981 links between source files with --preserve=links
1982 * cp accepts new options:
1983 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1984 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1985 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1986 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1987 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1988 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1989 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1990 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1991 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1993 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1994 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1995 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1996 even though it's older than dest.
1997 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1998 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1999 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2000 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2001 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2003 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2004 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2005 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2006 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2007 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2008 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2009 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2011 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2012 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2013 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2015 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2016 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2017 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2018 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2019 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2020 This is the default.
2022 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2023 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2024 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2025 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2026 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2028 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2031 ========================================================================
2032 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2033 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2036 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2037 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2039 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2040 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2041 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2042 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2043 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2045 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2046 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2047 that specifies a non-directory
2050 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2051 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2052 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2053 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2054 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2055 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2056 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2057 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2058 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2059 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2060 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2061 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2062 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2063 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2064 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2065 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2066 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2067 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2068 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2069 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2070 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2071 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2072 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2073 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2075 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2076 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2077 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2079 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2081 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2082 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2084 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2085 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2086 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2087 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2088 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2090 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2091 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2092 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2093 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2094 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2096 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2098 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2099 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2100 * still more portability fixes
2101 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2102 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2104 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2106 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2108 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2110 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2111 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2112 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2113 there is any time remaining
2114 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2116 ========================================================================
2117 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2118 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2120 This package began as the union of the following:
2121 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2123 ========================================================================
2125 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2128 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2129 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2130 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2131 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2132 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2133 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.