1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-21) [unstable]
7 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
9 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
10 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic points to, instead.
11 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
13 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
14 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
16 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
17 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
18 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
20 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
21 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
23 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
24 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
25 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
26 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
28 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
29 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
31 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
32 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
33 the file system does not support it.
35 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
37 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
39 The --date (-d) option of "date" and "touch" is now pickier about date values:
40 it rejects dates like "January 32" that have out-of-range components.
41 Also, date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
42 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
43 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
45 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
47 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
48 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
49 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
50 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
52 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
53 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
54 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
55 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
57 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
58 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
59 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
60 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
62 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
63 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
65 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
67 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
68 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
69 reporting incorrect results.
73 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
74 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
76 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
77 value happens to be -1.
79 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
81 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
82 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
84 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
85 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
87 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
88 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
89 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
90 the file name does not look like a page range.
92 printf has several changes:
94 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
95 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
97 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
98 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
99 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
101 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
102 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
105 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
106 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
108 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
109 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
111 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
112 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
114 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
116 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
118 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
119 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
120 when first encountering the directory.
124 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
125 output; POSIX requires this.
127 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
128 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
130 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
132 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
133 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
135 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
136 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
137 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
138 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
139 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
140 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
141 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
143 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
144 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
145 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
147 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
148 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
150 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
152 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
154 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
155 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
156 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
157 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
159 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
163 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
164 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
165 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
166 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
167 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
169 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
170 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
171 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
173 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
174 is longer than PATH_MAX.
176 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
177 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
179 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
180 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
181 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
182 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
183 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
185 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
186 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
188 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
190 nocreat do not create the output file
191 excl fail if the output file already exists
192 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
193 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
195 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
197 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
198 direct use direct I/O for data
199 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
200 sync likewise, but also for metadata
201 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
202 nofollow do not follow symlinks
204 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
206 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
207 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
210 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
211 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
212 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
213 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
214 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
215 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
217 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
218 list of NUL-terminated file names.
220 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
221 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
222 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
224 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
225 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
227 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
228 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
230 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
231 for compatibility with bash.
233 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
234 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
235 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
236 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
238 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
239 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
241 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
243 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
244 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
245 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
247 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
250 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
252 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
253 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
254 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
255 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
256 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
257 an offset, not as a file name.
259 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
260 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
262 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
263 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
265 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
266 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
268 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
269 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
270 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
272 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
273 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
277 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
279 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
281 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
285 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
286 or more arguments between partitions.
288 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
289 holes in the destination.
291 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
292 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
293 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
294 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
295 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
296 terminates immediately.
298 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
300 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
302 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
303 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
304 not the empty string.
306 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
307 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
311 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
312 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
313 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
316 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
323 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
327 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
328 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
330 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
331 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
333 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
334 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
335 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
338 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
342 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
343 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
345 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
346 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
348 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
349 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
350 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
352 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
354 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
357 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
359 ** Configuration option
361 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
362 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
366 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
367 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
371 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
372 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
373 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
376 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
377 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
378 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
379 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
380 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
381 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
384 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
388 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
389 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
390 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
392 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
393 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
395 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
397 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
398 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
399 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
400 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
402 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
404 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
405 not just the ones that reference directories
407 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
408 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
410 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
411 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
412 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
414 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
415 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
416 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
417 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
418 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
419 ragged when a datum was too wide.
421 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
426 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
427 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
429 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
431 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
433 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
435 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
436 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
438 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
439 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
441 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
443 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
447 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
449 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
451 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
452 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
453 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
454 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
455 resolution is the best we can do right now.
457 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
458 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
460 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
461 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
463 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
464 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
466 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
467 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
468 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
472 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
473 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
474 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
475 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
476 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
477 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
478 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
479 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
480 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
481 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
482 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
483 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
484 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
485 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
487 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
489 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
490 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
492 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
494 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
496 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
497 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
499 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
501 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
502 without a trailing newline.
504 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
505 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
507 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
510 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
514 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
516 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
518 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
519 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
520 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
521 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
523 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
525 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
526 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
527 be printed without leading spaces.
529 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
530 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
535 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
536 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
537 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
539 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
541 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
542 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
544 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
545 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
547 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
548 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
550 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
552 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
554 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
556 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
557 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
559 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
561 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
563 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
564 byte offsets are specified.
567 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
570 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
573 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
574 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
575 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
576 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
577 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
578 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
579 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
580 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
581 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
582 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
583 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
584 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
585 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
586 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
587 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
588 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
589 directory where M has write access.
590 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
591 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
592 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
595 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
596 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
597 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
598 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
599 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
600 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
601 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
602 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
603 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
604 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
605 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
606 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
607 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
608 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
609 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
610 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
611 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
612 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
613 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
614 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
615 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
616 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
617 appeared one additional time.
619 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
620 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
621 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
622 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
625 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
626 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
627 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
628 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
629 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
630 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
631 if there were more than 338.
633 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
634 - false --help now exits nonzero
637 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
638 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
639 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
640 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
643 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
644 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
645 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
646 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
647 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
650 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
651 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
652 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
653 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
654 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
655 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
656 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
659 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
660 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
661 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
662 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
663 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
664 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
666 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
667 under certain unusual conditions
668 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
669 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
672 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
673 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
674 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
675 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
676 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
677 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
678 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
679 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
680 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
681 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
682 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
683 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
684 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
685 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
686 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
687 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
690 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
691 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
694 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
695 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
696 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
697 involving hard-linked directories
698 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
699 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
700 character-special and block files
703 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
704 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
705 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
706 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
707 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
708 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
709 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
710 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
711 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
713 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
714 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
715 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
716 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
717 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
718 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
719 specified on the command line.
720 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
721 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
722 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
723 the first file untouched.
724 * readlink: new program
725 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
726 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
727 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
728 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
729 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
730 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
733 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
734 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
735 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
736 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
737 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
738 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
739 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
740 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
741 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
742 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
743 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
744 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
746 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
747 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
748 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
750 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
751 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
752 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
753 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
754 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
755 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
756 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
757 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
760 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
761 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
764 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
765 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
766 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
767 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
768 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
769 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
770 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
773 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
774 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
776 ========================================================================
777 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
778 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
781 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
783 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
784 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
785 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
786 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
787 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
788 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
789 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
790 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
791 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
792 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
793 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
794 The old options will continue to work for a while.
796 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
797 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
798 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
799 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
801 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
804 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
806 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
807 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
808 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
809 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
810 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
811 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
812 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
815 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
816 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
817 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
818 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
819 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
820 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
821 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
822 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
823 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
824 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
825 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
826 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
827 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
828 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
829 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
830 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
832 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
833 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
835 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
836 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
837 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
838 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
839 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
840 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
842 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
843 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
844 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
845 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
846 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
847 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
848 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
850 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
851 the source files in the following example:
852 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
853 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
854 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
855 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
856 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
857 links between source files with --preserve=links
858 * cp accepts new options:
859 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
860 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
861 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
862 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
863 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
864 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
865 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
866 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
867 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
869 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
870 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
871 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
872 even though it's older than dest.
873 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
874 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
875 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
876 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
877 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
879 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
880 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
881 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
882 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
883 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
884 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
885 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
887 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
888 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
889 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
891 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
892 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
893 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
894 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
895 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
898 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
899 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
900 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
901 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
902 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
904 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
907 ========================================================================
908 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
909 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
912 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
913 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
915 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
916 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
917 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
918 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
919 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
921 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
922 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
923 that specifies a non-directory
926 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
927 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
928 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
929 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
930 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
931 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
932 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
933 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
934 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
935 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
936 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
937 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
938 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
939 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
940 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
941 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
942 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
943 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
944 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
945 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
946 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
947 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
948 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
949 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
951 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
952 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
953 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
955 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
957 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
958 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
960 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
961 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
962 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
963 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
964 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
966 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
967 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
968 required support; from Bruno Haible.
969 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
970 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
972 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
974 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
975 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
976 * still more portability fixes
977 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
978 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
980 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
982 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
984 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
986 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
987 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
988 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
989 there is any time remaining
990 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
992 ========================================================================
993 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
994 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
996 This package began as the union of the following:
997 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
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