1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
7 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
8 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
10 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
11 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
14 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
18 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
19 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
20 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
22 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
23 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
24 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
25 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
29 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
30 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
31 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
32 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
35 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
39 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
41 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
42 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
43 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
46 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
50 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
51 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
53 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
55 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
57 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
59 ** Programs no longer installed by default
63 ** Changes in behavior
65 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
66 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
68 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
69 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
71 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
72 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
73 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
77 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
78 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
79 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
80 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
81 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
82 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
83 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
84 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
85 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
86 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
87 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
89 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
92 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
93 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
94 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
96 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
97 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
98 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
103 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
104 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
105 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
106 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
108 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
109 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
110 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
111 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
112 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
113 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
114 of "make check" fail.
116 ** Remove deprecated options
118 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
119 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
120 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
121 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
122 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
124 ** Improved robustness
126 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
127 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
128 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
129 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
130 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
131 loss of the contents of a/f.
133 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
134 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
138 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
139 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
140 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
142 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
143 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
144 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
145 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
147 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
148 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
149 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
150 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
151 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
152 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
153 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
154 destination is a symlink.
156 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
158 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
159 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
161 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
162 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
164 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
166 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
167 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
169 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
170 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
172 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
175 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
176 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
178 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
179 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
181 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
182 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
183 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
184 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
186 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
187 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
188 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
190 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
191 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
192 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
194 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
195 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
196 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
197 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
199 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
200 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
201 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
203 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
204 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
206 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
207 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
209 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
211 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
212 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
213 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
215 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
216 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
218 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
219 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
221 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
222 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
224 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
225 [present in the original version]
228 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
232 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
234 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
235 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
236 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
238 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
239 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
241 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
245 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
246 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
248 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
249 support but with insufficient /proc support.
251 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
252 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
254 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
255 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
256 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
257 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
258 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
259 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
261 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
262 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
265 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
266 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
268 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
271 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
272 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
273 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
275 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
276 directory is unreadable.
278 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
279 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
280 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
282 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
283 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
284 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
285 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
286 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
289 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
290 Before it would print nothing.
292 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
294 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
295 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
296 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
297 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
298 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
299 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
300 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
301 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
303 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
307 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
308 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
309 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
311 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
312 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
313 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
314 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
317 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
321 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
322 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
323 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
324 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
325 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
326 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
327 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
329 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
330 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
331 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
332 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
333 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
334 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
335 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
336 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
338 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
339 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
340 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
343 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
347 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
348 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
350 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
351 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
352 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
354 ** Improved robustness
356 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
357 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
358 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
361 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
365 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
366 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
367 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
368 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
369 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
371 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
375 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
378 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
382 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
383 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
384 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
385 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
387 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
388 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
390 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
391 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
392 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
395 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
397 ** Improved robustness
399 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
400 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
402 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
403 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
404 or NFS-mounted partition.
406 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
407 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
411 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
412 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
413 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
414 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
415 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
416 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
418 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
419 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
421 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
422 or neglect to report file removal.
424 For the "groups" command:
426 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
427 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
429 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
431 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
433 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
437 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
438 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
441 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
443 ** Changes in behavior
445 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
446 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
447 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
448 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
450 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
451 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
452 a final `./' or `../' component.
454 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
455 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
458 ** Infrastructure changes
460 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
461 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
462 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
463 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
467 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
470 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
471 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
472 dirent.d_type support.
474 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
475 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
477 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
478 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
479 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
480 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
483 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
485 ** Changes in behavior
487 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
491 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
492 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
496 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
497 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
498 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
500 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
501 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
503 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
504 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
506 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
508 ** Improved robustness
510 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
511 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
512 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
514 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
515 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
518 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
519 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
521 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
522 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
524 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
525 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
527 ** Changes in behavior
529 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
530 where the two are distinct.
532 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
533 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
534 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
535 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
536 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
537 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
538 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
539 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
540 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
541 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
542 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
543 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
544 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
545 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
546 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
547 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
548 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
550 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
551 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
552 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
554 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
555 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
556 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
557 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
560 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
561 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
565 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
566 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
567 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
568 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
570 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
571 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
572 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
574 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
575 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
576 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
577 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
578 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
581 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
582 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
584 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
585 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
586 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
587 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
589 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
590 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
591 successful and the output is easier to parse.
593 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
594 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
595 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
596 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
598 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
599 and sticky) with the -m option.
601 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
602 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
603 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
604 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
605 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
607 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
608 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
610 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
614 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
615 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
616 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
617 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
619 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
621 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
623 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
624 silently ignoring one of them.
626 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
627 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
628 containing this change was 5.92.
630 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
631 automatically newline terminated.
633 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
634 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
635 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
636 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
639 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
640 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
641 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
644 ** Scheduled for removal
646 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
647 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
649 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
650 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
651 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
652 command to unlink a directory.
654 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
655 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
656 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
657 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
661 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
662 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
663 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
664 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
665 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
666 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
670 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
671 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
673 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
675 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
676 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
677 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
679 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
680 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
683 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
684 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
686 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
687 list directories before files.
689 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
690 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
691 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
692 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
695 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
697 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
699 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
700 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
701 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
703 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
704 list of NUL-terminated file names.
708 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
709 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
710 usually printing nothing.
712 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
714 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
715 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
716 them with hard-linked directories.
718 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
719 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
720 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
722 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
723 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
724 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
726 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
729 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
730 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
732 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
733 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
735 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
736 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
738 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
739 all command-line arguments.
741 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
743 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
745 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
746 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
748 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
750 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
751 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
752 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
753 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
754 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
756 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
757 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
759 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
760 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
761 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
762 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
764 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
766 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
770 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
771 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
773 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
774 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
776 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
777 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
779 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
780 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
782 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
783 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
785 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
787 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
788 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
789 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
792 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
794 ** Build-related bug fixes
796 installing .mo files would fail
799 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
803 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
805 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
808 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
812 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
813 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
817 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
819 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
820 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
822 ** Deprecated options
824 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
825 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
827 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
831 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
833 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
834 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
835 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
836 conforming to older POSIX versions.
838 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
841 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
847 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
852 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
854 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
856 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
857 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
858 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
860 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
861 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
862 problematic usages. These include:
864 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
865 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
866 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
867 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
868 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
869 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
870 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
871 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
872 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
874 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
875 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
877 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
878 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
879 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
880 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
882 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
883 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
884 between binary and text files.
886 The following programs now always use text input/output:
890 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
894 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
895 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
898 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
900 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
901 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
903 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
904 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
905 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
907 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
909 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
911 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
912 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
913 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
917 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
919 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
920 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
922 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
923 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
924 blocks until F contains N blocks.
928 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
929 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
933 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
934 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
935 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
939 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
940 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
944 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
946 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
948 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
952 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
953 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
954 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
956 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
957 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
958 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
959 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
960 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
962 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
966 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
967 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
968 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
970 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
972 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
973 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
974 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
975 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
977 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
979 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
980 rather than silently wrapping around.
982 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
983 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
985 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
986 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
988 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
989 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
990 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
993 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
995 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
997 ** Improved robustness
999 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1000 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1001 no matter how large the result.
1003 ** Improved portability
1005 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1006 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1008 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1010 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1011 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1012 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1014 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1015 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1019 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1020 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1022 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1024 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1025 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1026 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1027 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1029 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1030 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1032 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1033 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1034 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1036 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1038 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1039 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1041 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1042 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1044 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1046 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1047 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1049 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1050 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1052 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1053 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1054 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1056 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1058 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1060 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1064 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1066 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1067 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1068 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1070 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1071 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1073 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1074 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1075 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1077 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1078 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1080 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1081 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1082 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1083 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1085 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1086 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1088 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1089 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1090 the file system does not support it.
1092 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1094 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1095 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1097 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1099 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1100 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1102 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1103 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1104 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1105 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1107 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1108 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1111 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1112 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1113 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1114 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1116 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1117 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1118 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1119 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1121 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1122 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1124 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1126 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1127 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1128 reporting incorrect results.
1132 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1133 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1135 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1138 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1140 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1141 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1143 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1144 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1146 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1149 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1150 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1151 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1152 the file name does not look like a page range.
1154 printf has several changes:
1156 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1157 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1159 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1160 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1161 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1163 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1164 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1167 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1168 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1170 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1171 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1173 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1175 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1176 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1178 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1180 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1182 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1183 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1184 when first encountering the directory.
1188 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1189 output; POSIX requires this.
1191 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1192 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1194 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1196 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1197 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1199 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1200 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1202 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1203 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1204 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1205 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1206 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1207 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1208 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1210 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1211 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1212 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1214 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1215 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1217 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1219 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1221 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1222 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1223 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1224 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1226 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1230 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1231 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1232 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1233 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1234 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1236 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1237 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1238 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1240 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1241 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1243 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1244 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1246 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1247 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1248 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1249 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1250 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1252 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1253 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1255 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1256 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1258 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1260 nocreat do not create the output file
1261 excl fail if the output file already exists
1262 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1263 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1265 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1267 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1268 direct use direct I/O for data
1269 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1270 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1271 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1272 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1273 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1275 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1277 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1278 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1281 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1282 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1283 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1284 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1285 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1286 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1288 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1289 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1291 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1294 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1296 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1298 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1299 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1301 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1302 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1303 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1305 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1306 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1307 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1309 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1311 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1312 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1314 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1315 for compatibility with bash.
1317 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1319 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1320 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1321 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1322 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1324 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1325 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1327 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1328 ls supports TABSIZE.
1329 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1330 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1331 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1333 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1336 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1338 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1339 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1340 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1341 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1342 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1343 an offset, not as a file name.
1345 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1346 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1348 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1349 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1351 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1352 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1354 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1355 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1356 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1358 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1359 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1361 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1362 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1366 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1368 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1370 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1374 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1375 or more arguments between partitions.
1377 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1378 holes in the destination.
1380 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1381 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1382 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1383 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1384 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1385 terminates immediately.
1387 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1389 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1391 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1392 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1393 not the empty string.
1395 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1396 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1400 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1401 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1402 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1405 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1412 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1416 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1417 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1419 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1420 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1422 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1423 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1424 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1427 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1431 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1432 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1434 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1435 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1437 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1438 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1439 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1441 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1443 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1446 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1448 ** Configuration option
1450 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1451 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1455 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1456 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1460 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1461 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1462 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1465 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1466 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1467 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1468 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1469 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1470 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1471 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1474 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1478 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1479 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1480 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1482 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1483 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1485 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1487 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1488 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1489 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1490 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1492 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1494 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1495 not just the ones that reference directories
1497 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1498 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1500 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1501 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1502 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1504 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1505 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1506 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1507 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1508 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1509 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1511 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1516 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1517 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1519 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1521 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1523 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1525 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1526 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1528 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1529 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1531 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1533 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1537 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1539 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1541 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1542 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1543 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1544 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1545 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1547 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1548 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1550 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1551 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1553 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1554 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1556 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1557 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1558 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1562 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1563 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1564 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1565 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1566 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1567 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1568 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1569 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1570 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1571 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1572 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1573 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1574 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1575 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1577 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1579 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1580 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1582 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1584 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1586 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1587 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1589 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1591 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1592 without a trailing newline.
1594 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1595 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1597 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1600 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1604 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1606 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1608 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1609 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1610 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1611 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1613 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1615 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1616 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1617 be printed without leading spaces.
1619 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1620 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1625 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1626 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1627 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1629 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1631 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1632 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1634 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1635 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1637 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1638 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1640 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1642 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1644 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1646 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1647 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1649 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1651 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1653 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1654 byte offsets are specified.
1657 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1660 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1663 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1664 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1665 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1666 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1667 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1668 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1669 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1670 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1671 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1672 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1673 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1674 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1675 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1676 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1677 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1678 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1679 directory where M has write access.
1680 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1681 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1682 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1685 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1686 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1687 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1688 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1689 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1690 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1691 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1692 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1693 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1694 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1695 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1696 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1697 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1698 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1699 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1700 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1701 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1702 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1703 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1704 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1705 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1706 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1707 appeared one additional time.
1709 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1710 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1711 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1712 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1715 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1716 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1717 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1718 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1719 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1720 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1721 if there were more than 338.
1723 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1724 - false --help now exits nonzero
1727 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1728 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1729 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1730 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1733 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1734 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1735 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1736 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1737 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1740 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1741 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1742 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1743 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1744 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1745 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1746 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1749 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1750 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1751 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1752 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1753 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1754 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1756 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1757 under certain unusual conditions
1758 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1759 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1762 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1763 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1764 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1765 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1766 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1767 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1768 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1769 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1770 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1771 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1772 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1773 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1774 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1775 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1776 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1777 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1780 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1781 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1784 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1785 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1786 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1787 involving hard-linked directories
1788 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1789 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1790 character-special and block files
1793 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1794 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1795 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1796 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1797 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1798 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1799 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1800 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1801 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1803 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1804 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1805 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1806 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1807 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1808 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1809 specified on the command line.
1810 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1811 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1812 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1813 the first file untouched.
1814 * readlink: new program
1815 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1816 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1817 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1818 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1819 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1820 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1823 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1824 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1825 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1826 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1827 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1828 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1829 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1830 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1831 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1832 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1833 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1834 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1836 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1837 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1838 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1840 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1841 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1842 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1843 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1844 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1845 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1846 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1847 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1850 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1851 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1854 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1855 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1856 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1857 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1858 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1859 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1860 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1863 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1864 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1866 ========================================================================
1867 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1868 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1871 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1873 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1874 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1875 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1876 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1877 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1878 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1879 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1880 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1881 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1882 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1883 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1884 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1886 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1887 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1888 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1889 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1891 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1894 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1896 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1897 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1898 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1899 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1900 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1901 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1902 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1905 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1906 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1907 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1908 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1909 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1910 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1911 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1912 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1913 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1914 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1915 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1916 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1917 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1918 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1919 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1920 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1922 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1923 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1925 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1926 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1927 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1928 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1929 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1930 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1932 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1933 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1934 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1935 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1936 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1937 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1938 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1940 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1941 the source files in the following example:
1942 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1943 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1944 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1945 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1946 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1947 links between source files with --preserve=links
1948 * cp accepts new options:
1949 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1950 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1951 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1952 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1953 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1954 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1955 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1956 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1957 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1959 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1960 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1961 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1962 even though it's older than dest.
1963 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1964 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1965 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1966 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1967 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1969 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1970 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1971 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1972 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1973 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1974 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1975 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1977 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1978 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1979 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1981 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1982 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1983 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1984 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1985 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1986 This is the default.
1988 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1989 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1990 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1991 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1992 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1994 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1997 ========================================================================
1998 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1999 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2002 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2003 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2005 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2006 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2007 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2008 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2009 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2011 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2012 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2013 that specifies a non-directory
2016 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2017 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2018 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2019 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2020 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2021 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2022 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2023 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2024 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2025 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2026 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2027 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2028 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2029 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2030 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2031 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2032 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2033 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2034 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2035 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2036 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2037 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2038 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2039 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2041 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2042 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2043 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2045 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2047 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2048 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2050 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2051 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2052 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2053 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2054 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2056 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2057 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2058 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2059 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2060 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2062 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2064 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2065 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2066 * still more portability fixes
2067 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2068 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2070 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2072 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2074 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2076 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2077 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2078 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2079 there is any time remaining
2080 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2082 ========================================================================
2083 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2084 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2086 This package began as the union of the following:
2087 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2089 ========================================================================
2091 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2094 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2095 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2096 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2097 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2098 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2099 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.