1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 ** Changes in behavior
12 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
13 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
15 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
16 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
17 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
21 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
23 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
24 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
25 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
27 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
28 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
29 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
34 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
35 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
36 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
37 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
39 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
40 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
41 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
42 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
43 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
44 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
47 ** Remove deprecated options
49 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
50 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
51 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
52 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
53 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
57 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
58 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
59 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
60 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
62 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
63 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
64 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
65 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
66 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
67 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
68 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
69 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
70 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
71 the destination is a symlink.
73 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
75 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
76 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
78 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
80 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
81 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
83 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
86 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
87 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
89 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
90 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
92 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
93 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
94 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
95 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
97 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
98 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
99 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
101 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
102 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
103 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
105 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
106 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
107 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
108 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
110 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
111 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
113 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
114 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
115 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
117 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
118 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
120 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
121 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
123 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
124 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
126 ** Improved robustness
128 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
129 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
132 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
136 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
138 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
139 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
140 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
142 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
143 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
145 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
149 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
150 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
152 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
153 support but with insufficient /proc support.
155 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
156 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
158 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
159 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
160 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
161 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
162 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
163 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
165 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
166 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
169 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
170 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
172 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
175 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
176 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
177 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
179 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
180 directory is unreadable.
182 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
183 Before it would print nothing.
185 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
189 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
190 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
191 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
193 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
194 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
195 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
196 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
199 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
203 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
204 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
205 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
206 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
207 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
208 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
209 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
211 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
212 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
213 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
214 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
215 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
216 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
217 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
218 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
220 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
221 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
222 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
225 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
229 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
230 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
232 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
233 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
234 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
236 ** Improved robustness
238 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
239 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
240 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
243 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
247 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
248 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
249 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
250 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
251 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
253 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
257 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
260 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
264 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
265 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
266 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
267 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
269 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
270 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
272 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
273 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
274 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
277 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
279 ** Improved robustness
281 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
282 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
284 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
285 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
286 or NFS-mounted partition.
288 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
289 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
293 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
294 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
295 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
296 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
297 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
298 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
300 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
301 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
303 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
304 or neglect to report file removal.
306 For the "groups" command:
308 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
309 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
311 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
313 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
315 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
319 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
320 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
323 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
325 ** Changes in behavior
327 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
328 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
329 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
330 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
332 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
333 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
334 a final `./' or `../' component.
336 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
337 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
340 ** Infrastructure changes
342 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
343 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
344 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
345 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
349 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
352 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
353 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
354 dirent.d_type support.
356 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
357 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
359 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
360 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
361 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
362 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
365 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
367 ** Changes in behavior
369 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
373 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
374 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
378 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
379 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
380 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
382 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
383 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
385 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
386 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
388 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
390 ** Improved robustness
392 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
393 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
394 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
396 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
397 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
400 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
401 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
403 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
404 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
406 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
407 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
409 ** Changes in behavior
411 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
412 where the two are distinct.
414 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
415 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
416 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
417 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
418 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
419 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
420 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
421 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
422 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
423 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
424 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
425 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
426 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
427 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
428 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
429 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
430 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
432 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
433 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
434 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
436 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
437 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
438 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
439 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
442 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
443 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
447 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
448 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
449 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
450 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
452 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
453 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
454 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
456 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
457 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
458 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
459 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
460 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
463 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
464 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
466 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
467 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
468 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
469 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
471 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
472 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
473 successful and the output is easier to parse.
475 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
476 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
477 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
478 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
480 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
481 and sticky) with the -m option.
483 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
484 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
485 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
486 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
487 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
489 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
490 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
492 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
496 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
497 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
498 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
499 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
501 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
503 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
505 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
506 silently ignoring one of them.
508 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
509 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
510 containing this change was 5.92.
512 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
513 automatically newline terminated.
515 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
516 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
517 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
518 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
521 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
522 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
523 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
526 ** Scheduled for removal
528 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
529 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
531 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
532 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
533 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
534 command to unlink a directory.
536 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
537 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
538 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
539 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
543 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
544 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
545 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
546 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
547 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
548 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
552 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
553 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
555 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
557 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
558 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
559 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
561 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
562 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
565 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
566 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
568 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
569 list directories before files.
571 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
572 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
573 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
574 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
577 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
579 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
581 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
582 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
583 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
585 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
586 list of NUL-terminated file names.
590 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
591 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
592 usually printing nothing.
594 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
596 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
597 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
598 them with hard-linked directories.
600 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
601 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
602 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
604 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
605 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
606 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
608 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
611 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
612 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
614 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
615 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
617 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
618 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
620 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
621 all command-line arguments.
623 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
625 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
627 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
628 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
630 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
632 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
633 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
634 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
635 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
636 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
638 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
639 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
641 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
642 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
643 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
644 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
646 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
648 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
652 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
653 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
655 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
656 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
658 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
659 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
661 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
662 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
664 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
665 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
667 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
669 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
670 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
671 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
674 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
676 ** Build-related bug fixes
678 installing .mo files would fail
681 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
685 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
687 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
690 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
694 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
695 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
699 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
701 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
702 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
704 ** Deprecated options
706 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
707 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
709 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
713 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
715 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
716 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
717 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
718 conforming to older POSIX versions.
720 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
723 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
729 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
734 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
736 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
738 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
739 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
740 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
742 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
743 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
744 problematic usages. These include:
746 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
747 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
748 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
749 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
750 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
751 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
752 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
753 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
754 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
756 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
757 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
759 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
760 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
761 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
762 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
764 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
765 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
766 between binary and text files.
768 The following programs now always use text input/output:
772 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
776 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
777 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
780 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
782 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
783 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
785 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
786 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
787 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
789 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
791 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
793 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
794 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
795 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
799 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
801 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
802 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
804 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
805 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
806 blocks until F contains N blocks.
810 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
811 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
815 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
816 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
817 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
821 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
822 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
826 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
828 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
830 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
834 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
835 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
836 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
838 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
839 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
840 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
841 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
842 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
844 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
848 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
849 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
850 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
852 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
854 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
855 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
856 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
857 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
859 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
861 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
862 rather than silently wrapping around.
864 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
865 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
867 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
868 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
870 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
871 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
872 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
875 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
877 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
879 ** Improved robustness
881 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
882 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
883 no matter how large the result.
885 ** Improved portability
887 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
888 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
890 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
892 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
893 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
894 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
896 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
897 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
901 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
902 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
904 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
906 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
907 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
908 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
909 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
911 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
912 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
914 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
915 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
916 categories if not specified by dircolors.
918 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
920 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
921 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
923 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
924 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
926 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
928 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
929 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
931 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
932 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
934 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
935 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
936 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
938 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
940 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
942 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
946 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
948 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
949 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
950 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
952 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
953 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
955 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
956 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
957 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
959 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
960 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
962 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
963 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
964 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
965 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
967 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
968 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
970 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
971 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
972 the file system does not support it.
974 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
976 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
977 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
979 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
981 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
982 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
984 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
985 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
986 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
987 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
989 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
990 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
993 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
994 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
995 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
996 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
998 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
999 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1000 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1001 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1003 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1004 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1006 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1008 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1009 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1010 reporting incorrect results.
1014 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1015 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1017 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1020 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1022 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1023 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1025 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1026 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1028 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1031 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1032 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1033 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1034 the file name does not look like a page range.
1036 printf has several changes:
1038 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1039 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1041 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1042 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1043 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1045 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1046 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1049 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1050 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1052 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1053 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1055 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1057 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1058 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1060 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1062 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1064 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1065 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1066 when first encountering the directory.
1070 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1071 output; POSIX requires this.
1073 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1074 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1076 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1078 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1079 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1081 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1082 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1084 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1085 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1086 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1087 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1088 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1089 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1090 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1092 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1093 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1094 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1096 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1097 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1099 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1101 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1103 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1104 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1105 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1106 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1108 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1112 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1113 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1114 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1115 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1116 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1118 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1119 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1120 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1122 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1123 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1125 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1126 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1128 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1129 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1130 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1131 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1132 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1134 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1135 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1137 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1138 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1140 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1142 nocreat do not create the output file
1143 excl fail if the output file already exists
1144 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1145 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1147 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1149 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1150 direct use direct I/O for data
1151 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1152 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1153 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1154 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1155 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1157 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1159 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1160 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1163 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1164 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1165 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1166 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1167 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1168 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1170 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1171 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1173 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1176 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1178 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1180 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1181 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1183 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1184 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1185 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1187 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1188 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1189 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1191 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1193 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1194 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1196 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1197 for compatibility with bash.
1199 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1201 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1202 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1203 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1204 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1206 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1207 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1209 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1210 ls supports TABSIZE.
1211 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1212 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1213 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1215 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1218 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1220 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1221 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1222 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1223 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1224 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1225 an offset, not as a file name.
1227 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1228 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1230 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1231 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1233 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1234 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1236 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1237 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1238 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1240 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1241 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1243 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1244 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1248 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1250 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1252 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1256 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1257 or more arguments between partitions.
1259 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1260 holes in the destination.
1262 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1263 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1264 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1265 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1266 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1267 terminates immediately.
1269 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1271 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1273 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1274 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1275 not the empty string.
1277 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1278 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1282 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1283 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1284 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1287 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1294 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1298 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1299 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1301 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1302 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1304 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1305 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1306 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1309 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1313 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1314 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1316 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1317 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1319 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1320 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1321 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1323 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1325 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1328 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1330 ** Configuration option
1332 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1333 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1337 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1338 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1342 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1343 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1344 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1347 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1348 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1349 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1350 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1351 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1352 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1353 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1356 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1360 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1361 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1362 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1364 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1365 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1367 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1369 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1370 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1371 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1372 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1374 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1376 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1377 not just the ones that reference directories
1379 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1380 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1382 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1383 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1384 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1386 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1387 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1388 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1389 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1390 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1391 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1393 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1398 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1399 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1401 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1403 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1405 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1407 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1408 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1410 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1411 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1413 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1415 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1419 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1421 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1423 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1424 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1425 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1426 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1427 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1429 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1430 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1432 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1433 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1435 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1436 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1438 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1439 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1440 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1444 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1445 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1446 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1447 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1448 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1449 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1450 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1451 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1452 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1453 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1454 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1455 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1456 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1457 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1459 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1461 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1462 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1464 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1466 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1468 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1469 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1471 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1473 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1474 without a trailing newline.
1476 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1477 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1479 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1482 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1486 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1488 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1490 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1491 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1492 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1493 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1495 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1497 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1498 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1499 be printed without leading spaces.
1501 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1502 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1507 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1508 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1509 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1511 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1513 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1514 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1516 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1517 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1519 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1520 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1522 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1524 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1526 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1528 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1529 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1531 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1533 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1535 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1536 byte offsets are specified.
1539 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1542 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1545 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1546 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1547 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1548 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1549 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1550 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1551 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1552 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1553 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1554 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1555 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1556 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1557 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1558 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1559 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1560 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1561 directory where M has write access.
1562 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1563 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1564 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1567 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1568 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1569 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1570 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1571 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1572 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1573 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1574 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1575 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1576 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1577 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1578 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1579 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1580 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1581 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1582 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1583 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1584 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1585 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1586 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1587 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1588 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1589 appeared one additional time.
1591 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1592 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1593 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1594 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1597 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1598 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1599 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1600 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1601 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1602 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1603 if there were more than 338.
1605 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1606 - false --help now exits nonzero
1609 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1610 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1611 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1612 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1615 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1616 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1617 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1618 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1619 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1622 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1623 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1624 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1625 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1626 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1627 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1628 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1631 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1632 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1633 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1634 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1635 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1636 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1638 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1639 under certain unusual conditions
1640 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1641 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1644 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1645 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1646 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1647 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1648 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1649 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1650 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1651 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1652 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1653 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1654 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1655 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1656 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1657 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1658 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1659 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1662 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1663 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1666 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1667 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1668 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1669 involving hard-linked directories
1670 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1671 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1672 character-special and block files
1675 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1676 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1677 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1678 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1679 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1680 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1681 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1682 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1683 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1685 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1686 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1687 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1688 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1689 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1690 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1691 specified on the command line.
1692 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1693 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1694 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1695 the first file untouched.
1696 * readlink: new program
1697 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1698 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1699 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1700 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1701 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1702 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1705 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1706 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1707 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1708 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1709 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1710 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1711 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1712 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1713 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1714 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1715 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1716 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1718 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1719 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1720 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1722 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1723 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1724 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1725 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1726 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1727 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1728 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1729 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1732 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1733 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1736 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1737 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1738 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1739 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1740 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1741 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1742 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1745 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1746 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1748 ========================================================================
1749 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1750 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1753 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1755 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1756 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1757 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1758 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1759 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1760 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1761 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1762 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1763 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1764 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1765 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1766 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1768 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1769 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1770 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1771 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1773 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1776 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1778 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1779 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1780 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1781 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1782 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1783 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1784 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1787 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1788 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1789 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1790 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1791 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1792 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1793 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1794 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1795 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1796 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1797 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1798 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1799 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1800 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1801 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1802 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1804 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1805 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1807 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1808 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1809 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1810 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1811 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1812 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1814 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1815 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1816 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1817 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1818 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1819 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1820 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1822 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1823 the source files in the following example:
1824 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1825 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1826 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1827 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1828 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1829 links between source files with --preserve=links
1830 * cp accepts new options:
1831 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1832 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1833 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1834 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1835 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1836 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1837 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1838 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1839 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1841 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1842 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1843 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1844 even though it's older than dest.
1845 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1846 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1847 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1848 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1849 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1851 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1852 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1853 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1854 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1855 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1856 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1857 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1859 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1860 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1861 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1863 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1864 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1865 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1866 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1867 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1868 This is the default.
1870 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1871 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1872 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1873 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1874 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1876 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1879 ========================================================================
1880 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1881 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1884 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1885 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1887 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1888 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1889 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1890 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1891 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1893 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1894 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1895 that specifies a non-directory
1898 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1899 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1900 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1901 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1902 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1903 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1904 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1905 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1906 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1907 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1908 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1909 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1910 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1911 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1912 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1913 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1914 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1915 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1916 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1917 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1918 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1919 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1920 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1921 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1923 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1924 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1925 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1927 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1929 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1930 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1932 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1933 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1934 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1935 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1936 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1938 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1939 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1940 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1941 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1942 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1944 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1946 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1947 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1948 * still more portability fixes
1949 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1950 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1952 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1954 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1956 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1958 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1959 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1960 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1961 there is any time remaining
1962 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1964 ========================================================================
1965 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1966 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1968 This package began as the union of the following:
1969 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1971 ========================================================================
1973 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1976 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1977 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1978 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1979 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1980 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1981 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.