1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.3-cvs (2006-??-??) [stable]
7 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
8 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
12 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
13 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
14 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
15 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
16 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
17 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
19 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
20 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
22 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
23 or neglect to report file removal.
25 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
28 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
30 ** Changes in behavior
32 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
33 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
34 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
35 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
37 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
38 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
39 a final `./' or `../' component.
41 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
42 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
45 ** Infrastructure changes
47 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
48 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
49 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
50 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
54 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
57 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
58 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
59 dirent.d_type support.
61 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
62 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
64 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
65 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
66 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
67 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
70 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
72 ** Changes in behavior
74 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
78 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
79 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
83 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
84 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
85 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
87 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
88 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
90 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
91 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
93 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
95 ** Improved robustness
97 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
98 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
99 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
101 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
102 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
105 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
106 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
108 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
109 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
111 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
112 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
114 ** Changes in behavior
116 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
117 where the two are distinct.
119 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
120 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
121 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
122 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
123 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
124 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
125 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
126 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
127 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
128 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
129 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
130 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
131 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
132 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
133 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
134 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
135 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
137 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
138 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
139 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
141 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
142 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
143 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
144 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
147 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
148 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
152 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
153 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
154 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
155 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
157 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
158 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
159 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
161 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
162 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
163 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
164 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
165 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
168 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
169 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
171 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
172 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
173 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
174 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
176 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
177 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
178 successful and the output is easier to parse.
180 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
181 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
182 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
183 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
185 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
186 and sticky) with the -m option.
188 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
189 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
190 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
191 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
192 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
194 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
195 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
197 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
201 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
202 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
203 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
204 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
206 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
208 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
210 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
211 silently ignoring one of them.
213 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
214 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
215 containing this change was 5.92.
217 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
218 automatically newline terminated.
220 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
221 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
222 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
223 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
226 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
227 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
228 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
231 ** Scheduled for removal
233 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
234 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
236 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
237 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
238 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
239 command to unlink a directory.
241 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
242 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
243 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
244 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
248 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
249 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
250 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
251 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
252 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
253 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
257 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
258 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
260 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
262 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
263 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
264 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
266 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
267 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
270 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
271 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
273 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
274 list directories before files.
276 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
277 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
278 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
279 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
282 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
284 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
286 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
287 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
288 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
290 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
291 list of NUL-terminated file names.
295 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
296 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
297 usually printing nothing.
299 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
301 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
302 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
303 them with hard-linked directories.
305 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
306 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
307 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
309 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
310 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
311 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
313 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
316 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
317 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
319 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
320 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
322 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
323 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
325 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
326 all command-line arguments.
328 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
330 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
332 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
333 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
335 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
337 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
338 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
339 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
340 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
341 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
343 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
344 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
346 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
347 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
348 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
349 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
351 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
353 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
357 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
358 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
360 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
361 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
363 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
364 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
366 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
367 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
369 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
370 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
372 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
374 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
375 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
376 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
379 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
381 ** Build-related bug fixes
383 installing .mo files would fail
386 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
390 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
392 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
395 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
399 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
400 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
404 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
406 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
407 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
409 ** Deprecated options
411 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
412 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
414 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
418 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
420 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
421 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
422 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
423 conforming to older POSIX versions.
425 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
428 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
434 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
439 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
441 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
443 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
444 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
445 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
447 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
448 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
449 problematic usages. These include:
451 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
452 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
453 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
454 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
455 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
456 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
457 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
458 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
459 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
461 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
462 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
464 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
465 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
466 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
467 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
469 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
470 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
471 between binary and text files.
473 The following programs now always use text input/output:
477 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
481 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
482 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
485 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
487 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
488 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
490 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
491 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
492 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
494 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
496 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
498 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
499 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
500 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
504 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
506 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
507 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
509 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
510 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
511 blocks until F contains N blocks.
515 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
516 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
520 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
521 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
522 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
526 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
527 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
531 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
533 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
535 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
539 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
540 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
541 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
543 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
544 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
545 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
546 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
547 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
549 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
553 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
554 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
555 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
557 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
559 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
560 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
561 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
562 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
564 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
566 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
567 rather than silently wrapping around.
569 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
570 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
572 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
573 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
575 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
576 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
577 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
580 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
582 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
584 ** Improved robustness
586 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
587 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
588 no matter how large the result.
590 ** Improved portability
592 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
593 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
595 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
597 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
598 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
599 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
601 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
602 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
606 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
607 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
609 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
611 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
612 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
613 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
614 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
616 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
617 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
619 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
620 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
621 categories if not specified by dircolors.
623 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
625 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
626 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
628 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
629 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
631 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
633 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
634 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
636 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
637 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
639 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
640 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
641 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
643 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
645 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
647 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
651 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
653 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
654 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
655 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
657 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
658 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
660 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
661 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
662 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
664 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
665 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
667 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
668 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
669 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
670 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
672 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
673 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
675 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
676 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
677 the file system does not support it.
679 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
681 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
682 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
684 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
686 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
687 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
689 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
690 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
691 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
692 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
694 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
695 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
698 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
699 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
700 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
701 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
703 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
704 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
705 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
706 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
708 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
709 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
711 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
713 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
714 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
715 reporting incorrect results.
719 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
720 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
722 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
725 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
727 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
728 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
730 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
731 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
733 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
736 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
737 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
738 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
739 the file name does not look like a page range.
741 printf has several changes:
743 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
744 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
746 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
747 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
748 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
750 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
751 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
754 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
755 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
757 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
758 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
760 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
762 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
763 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
765 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
767 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
769 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
770 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
771 when first encountering the directory.
775 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
776 output; POSIX requires this.
778 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
779 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
781 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
783 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
784 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
786 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
787 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
789 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
790 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
791 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
792 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
793 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
794 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
795 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
797 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
798 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
799 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
801 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
802 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
804 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
806 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
808 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
809 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
810 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
811 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
813 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
817 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
818 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
819 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
820 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
821 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
823 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
824 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
825 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
827 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
828 is longer than PATH_MAX.
830 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
831 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
833 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
834 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
835 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
836 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
837 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
839 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
840 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
842 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
843 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
845 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
847 nocreat do not create the output file
848 excl fail if the output file already exists
849 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
850 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
852 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
854 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
855 direct use direct I/O for data
856 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
857 sync likewise, but also for metadata
858 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
859 nofollow do not follow symlinks
860 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
862 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
864 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
865 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
868 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
869 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
870 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
871 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
872 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
873 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
875 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
876 list of NUL-terminated file names.
878 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
881 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
883 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
885 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
886 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
888 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
889 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
890 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
892 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
893 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
894 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
896 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
898 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
899 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
901 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
902 for compatibility with bash.
904 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
906 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
907 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
908 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
909 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
911 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
912 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
914 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
916 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
917 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
918 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
920 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
923 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
925 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
926 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
927 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
928 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
929 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
930 an offset, not as a file name.
932 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
933 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
935 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
936 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
938 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
939 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
941 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
942 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
943 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
945 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
946 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
948 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
949 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
953 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
955 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
957 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
961 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
962 or more arguments between partitions.
964 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
965 holes in the destination.
967 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
968 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
969 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
970 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
971 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
972 terminates immediately.
974 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
976 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
978 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
979 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
980 not the empty string.
982 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
983 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
987 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
988 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
989 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
992 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
999 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1003 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1004 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1006 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1007 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1009 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1010 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1011 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1014 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1018 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1019 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1021 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1022 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1024 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1025 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1026 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1028 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1030 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1033 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1035 ** Configuration option
1037 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1038 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1042 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1043 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1047 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1048 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1049 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1052 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1053 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1054 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1055 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1056 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1057 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1058 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1061 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1065 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1066 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1067 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1069 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1070 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1072 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1074 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1075 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1076 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1077 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1079 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1081 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1082 not just the ones that reference directories
1084 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1085 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1087 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1088 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1089 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1091 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1092 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1093 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1094 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1095 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1096 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1098 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1103 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1104 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1106 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1108 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1110 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1112 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1113 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1115 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1116 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1118 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1120 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1124 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1126 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1128 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1129 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1130 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1131 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1132 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1134 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1135 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1137 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1138 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1140 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1141 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1143 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1144 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1145 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1149 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1150 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1151 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1152 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1153 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1154 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1155 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1156 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1157 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1158 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1159 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1160 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1161 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1162 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1164 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1166 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1167 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1169 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1171 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1173 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1174 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1176 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1178 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1179 without a trailing newline.
1181 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1182 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1184 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1187 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1191 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1193 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1195 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1196 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1197 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1198 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1200 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1202 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1203 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1204 be printed without leading spaces.
1206 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1207 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1212 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1213 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1214 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1216 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1218 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1219 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1221 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1222 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1224 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1225 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1227 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1229 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1231 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1233 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1234 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1236 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1238 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1240 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1241 byte offsets are specified.
1244 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1247 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1250 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1251 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1252 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1253 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1254 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1255 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1256 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1257 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1258 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1259 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1260 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1261 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1262 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1263 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1264 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1265 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1266 directory where M has write access.
1267 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1268 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1269 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1272 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1273 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1274 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1275 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1276 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1277 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1278 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1279 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1280 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1281 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1282 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1283 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1284 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1285 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1286 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1287 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1288 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1289 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1290 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1291 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1292 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1293 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1294 appeared one additional time.
1296 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1297 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1298 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1299 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1302 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1303 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1304 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1305 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1306 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1307 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1308 if there were more than 338.
1310 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1311 - false --help now exits nonzero
1314 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1315 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1316 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1317 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1320 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1321 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1322 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1323 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1324 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1327 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1328 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1329 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1330 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1331 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1332 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1333 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1336 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1337 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1338 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1339 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1340 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1341 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1343 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1344 under certain unusual conditions
1345 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1346 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1349 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1350 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1351 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1352 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1353 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1354 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1355 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1356 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1357 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1358 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1359 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1360 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1361 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1362 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1363 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1364 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1367 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1368 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1371 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1372 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1373 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1374 involving hard-linked directories
1375 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1376 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1377 character-special and block files
1380 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1381 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1382 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1383 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1384 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1385 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1386 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1387 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1388 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1390 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1391 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1392 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1393 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1394 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1395 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1396 specified on the command line.
1397 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1398 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1399 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1400 the first file untouched.
1401 * readlink: new program
1402 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1403 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1404 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1405 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1406 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1407 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1410 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1411 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1412 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1413 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1414 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1415 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1416 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1417 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1418 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1419 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1420 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1421 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1423 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1424 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1425 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1427 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1428 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1429 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1430 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1431 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1432 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1433 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1434 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1437 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1438 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1441 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1442 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1443 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1444 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1445 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1446 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1447 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1450 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1451 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1453 ========================================================================
1454 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1455 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1458 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1460 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1461 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1462 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1463 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1464 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1465 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1466 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1467 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1468 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1469 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1470 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1471 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1473 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1474 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1475 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1476 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1478 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1481 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1483 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1484 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1485 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1486 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1487 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1488 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1489 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1492 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1493 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1494 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1495 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1496 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1497 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1498 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1499 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1500 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1501 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1502 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1503 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1504 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1505 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1506 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1507 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1509 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1510 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1512 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1513 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1514 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1515 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1516 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1517 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1519 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1520 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1521 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1522 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1523 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1524 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1525 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1527 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1528 the source files in the following example:
1529 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1530 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1531 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1532 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1533 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1534 links between source files with --preserve=links
1535 * cp accepts new options:
1536 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1537 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1538 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1539 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1540 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1541 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1542 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1543 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1544 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1546 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1547 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1548 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1549 even though it's older than dest.
1550 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1551 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1552 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1553 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1554 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1556 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1557 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1558 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1559 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1560 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1561 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1562 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1564 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1565 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1566 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1568 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1569 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1570 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1571 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1572 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1573 This is the default.
1575 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1576 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1577 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1578 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1579 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1581 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1584 ========================================================================
1585 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1586 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1589 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1590 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1592 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1593 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1594 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1595 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1596 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1598 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1599 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1600 that specifies a non-directory
1603 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1604 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1605 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1606 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1607 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1608 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1609 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1610 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1611 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1612 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1613 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1614 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1615 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1616 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1617 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1618 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1619 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1620 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1621 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1622 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1623 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1624 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1625 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1626 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1628 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1629 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1630 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1632 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1634 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1635 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1637 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1638 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1639 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1640 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1641 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1643 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1644 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1645 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1646 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1647 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1649 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1651 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1652 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1653 * still more portability fixes
1654 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1655 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1657 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1659 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1661 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1663 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1664 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1665 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1666 there is any time remaining
1667 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1669 ========================================================================
1670 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1671 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1673 This package began as the union of the following:
1674 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1676 ========================================================================
1678 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1681 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1682 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1683 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1684 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1685 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1686 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.